Karl Chandler has 125 Jokes. Since Karl is clearly a numbers man, let’s get statistical. Heaps were double barrelled, nineteen fell flat, four he stumbled on and one his girlfriend told better.

It can be hard to get your head around whether 125 is a lot or a few. At Christmas time you might bust open a cracker with a relative and find the corny lines inside seem short, but by the time a few people have read them aloud they just drag on forever. Luckily, this show has no such problem, and if his jokes were in Christmas crackers they’d be sharing space with brand name goodies rather than easy-to-choke-on plastic. (If this sentence sounds like hyperbole, it’s not.)

A lot of comics complain that when they have to submit their show names to the festival guide they do not know what their show will be about and so can’t be specific. Chandler’s show sounded like it might be one of these, but it’s definitely not. This show is all about the jokes, and every one of them is counted down by a cheerful screen at his side (cheerful in colour, I mean – it doesn’t chip in with one-liners like Melvin did on Now You See It). His quick-fire, funny observations soon get the crowd going and are presented with inventive tricks to make sure it isn’t monotonous. Some of these tricks could have been explored more, but they aren’t the focus and the jokes are strong enough for this not to be hindrance.

The show eschews autobiographical approaches and storytelling and Karl doesn’t even play an instrument to evoke whimsy like Demetri Martin might. It’s simple, highly enjoyable and for next year’s festival I’m sure Chandler will be upgraded to a larger room than the intimate upstairs of Three Degrees at QV.