Seasons change, governments come and go, the Australian cricket team may one day earn an iota of respectability, but one thing's for sure: David O'Doherty will never run out of material.
Tonight he performed a new show with plenty of room for ad-libs, but O'Doherty, being the veritable broken faucet of spontaneity that he is, still ran overtime by nearly half an hour as he tossed out asides and one-liners at a Charlie Parker-esque pace (which is an appropriate comparison when you consider that O'Doherty's father was a jazz musician).
As ever, it was impossible to differentiate the improv from the script, but the speed at which he seamlessly traversed between the two seemed to be driven by some extra impetus tonight, be it from one too many dodgy airport coffees or the adrenaline rush from recalling his childhood fear of mice. He finished with his calling-card song Life, which seems to sum up his bleak, but somehow hopeful despite the odds, outlook. An exhausted audience was literally hoarse with laughter by the end of it.
