Showing @ Pleasance Courtyard 30th Aug 20:30 1 hr PG
“If the universe is infinite, I think it’s okay to do silly things.” So goes the logic of Alex Horne, a loveable if not particularly original comedian who bears more than a passing resemblance to Dave Gorman, not just in his show’s central conceit of relating a recently undertaken proposition bet, but even down to the ginger beard. Like Gorman, Horne is a middle-class man comfortable enough to be able to pursue idle tasks, and the one he assigns himself is simple enough; a thousand pound bet to get a hole-in-one (golf, that is) before his thirty-second birthday. But Horne soon makes things complicated; referencing Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, he uses his inane proposition to explore ideas of chance and coincidence and the nature of the universe.
What impresses most is Horne’s ability to enthral an audience with so little; an orange, some raffle tickets, a basic PowerPoint display and some brief allusions to mathematics and quantum mechanics, and the hour soon flies in. One might question the merit of watching the reasonably privileged while away their time with inconsequential wagers; you might suspect that the cosmological musings are simply an excuse to justify spending a good amount of time on the golf course instead of perhaps doing something more constructive like, say, becoming politically engaged. But if it is all an idle waste of time, you’ll probably be far too amused to notice.