Mindspiders, the title to Andrew O’Neill’s latest show, are the random thoughts that get stuck in your head like an earworm (such as ‘We didn't start the fire / It was always burning / Since the world's been turning’, you’re welcome…). Essentially, this is a clever excuse for binding together material that has little relation to each other: from O’Neill’s obsession with the word Bromley, to describing an infestation of Robert Smiths from The Cure in his home. If you like meandering shows, then this will be perfect for you: jokes are scattered across the stage, interspersed with non sequitur call-backs.

O’Neill found his niche on the comedy circuit by labelling himself the occultist heterosexual transvestite, bringing some refreshing diversity to the genre. Indeed, it’s wonderful to see the casualness with which he describes needing to shave in order to wear make-up (leading to a joke about having to use mineral water in order to do so). Unfortunately, the big let-down in Mindspiders is where O’Neill allies himself with the worst clichés of comedy by performing an extended and extremely graphic skit about how hard it would be to rape him owing to his tiny bum. Not one to notice that only 2 members of the audience were laughing at what he clearly thought was a section of surreal genius, O’Neill should have known to quit far faster than he did. As the minutes dragged on and the visuals became increasingly tasteless, I found myself unable to continue sitting in the audience and had to leave.

O’Neill has been compared to the likes of Eddie Izzard, but frankly that is an insult to Izzard who knows how to bind seemingly disparate concepts into a brilliant whole. Crucially, Izzard would never resort to a rape joke to plug the gaps of a lukewarm show. The only way to feel better after such a show is to read Patricia Lockwood’s poem ‘ The Rape Joke’, which begins:

The rape joke is that you were 19 years old.
The rape joke is that he was your boyfriend.
The rape joke it wore a goatee. A goatee.
Imagine the rape joke looking in the mirror, perfectly reflecting back itself, and grooming itself to look more like a rape joke. “Ahhhh,” it thinks. “Yes. A goatee.”
No offense.