Published on The Pun, 12 April 2010

American business guru Tom Peters says that the secret to success is to ‘under promise and over deliver’. Funny Irishman and tiny Yamaha keyboard guru David O’Doherty appears to subscribe to this advice.

His first song for the evening instructs the audience to ‘please lower your expectations’. Then he tells us how bad he is at telling jokes. Then he laments that every review he has ever received has essentially said, ‘It’s good, I suppose. If you’re into that sort of thing.’ And then he over delivers.

O’Doherty’s sense of humour is of the gently weird variety. His material always begins with observations of everyday life but he’s only ever a tangent or two away from something really surreal. His trademark shambolic plinky-plink keyboard songs are alternated with long ramblings about French pants and public transport experiences in the ‘quiet carriage’. These are also interspersed with extracts from the book he recently co-wrote with fellow comedians Claudia O’Doherty and Mike Ahern, 100 Facts About Pandas. (‘A blindfolded panda will always head north. This is due to the high iron content in the panda’s liver, which makes the animal slightly magnetic.’)

Fans of quietly eccentric observational comedy will dig this show, as will anyone with a penchant for vintage keyboards.