Kevin Bridges review – steamroller standup is a joy but what’s with the £10 cloakroom charge?

Hammersmith Apollo, London In his tour Here If You Need Me, the comic makes laugh-out-loud look easy with jokes about conjugal argy-bargy, smutty downloads – and a bit of politics Is there a better no-frills standup at work today than Kevin Bridges ? You’d struggle to find a more unfussily funny demonstration of the art form’s traditional virtues than at the Glaswegian’s new touring set.

It’s a consistently laugh-out-loud suite of observational material on subjects comics have addressed since time immemorial: nostalgia, marital dispute, the latest cultural trends – alongside, as Ben Elton used to have it, a little bit of politics, too. Bridges really does have the X factor, and – without him ever seeming to stretch himself – Here If You Need Me is a steamroller 75 minutes of standup. For me, it needed to be, after being hit by a £10 – 10 pounds! – cloakroom charge because my innocuous wee bag (a notebook, a novel, a pair of…