one4review | On 26, Aug 2026

Can you do your thing on a driech Tuesday with no front row and ten percent of the seats filled scattered round the room? It wasn’t quite that dire, and a good number of the audience knew the score, but yes, Robertson can bring exactly the same enthusiasm, love and energy on a quiet Tuesday as a raucous Saturday.

His thing is a love of the crowd, and he expresses his love through creative insults, quick-fire responsive punchlines, and generally being an absolute gremlin. John Robertson is a man who loves firing up a crowd. He spent twenty minutes manipulating the audience/ being manipulated by the audience into wild cheering as a result of a high five. It’s high-quality and highly-skilled crowd work, from a lovely man with a finely tuned sense of what’s working (and what’s not) and iron-clad self-confidence.

Robertson isn’t a cruel comedian, despite the insults, and generally seems to play with audients who’re up for it, easing away from those who look overly terrified. It’s not all crowd work; there is (Robertson assures us) a plan, it’s just something else looked more interesting to play with before we got to the plan. We were treated to three songs and a poem, each showcasing Robertson’s proclivity for provocative titles hiding deep thoughts and other profundities. Robertson is a comedian who benefits from some prior knowledge, and is definitely not going to suit everyone, but for the initiated and the willing, Robertson is a reliably unpredictable high-octane whirlwind of fun.

Reviewed by Laura
Laughing Horse @ The Counting House
Until 30th