The promise of this hour-long show brought to you by the minds of two regulars of the smoker circuit, Ben Pope and Jamie Fraser, was enticing to say the least, so it was with a strange combination of levity and disappointment that I left the Corpus Playrooms on Monday night. The show’s major disappointment was rooted in its conception merely as a vehicle for these admittedly amusing comics. Fraser’s parting farewell that they had ‘been Jamie meets the Pope’ rang hollow with the reality of a format that consisted of two halves of separate, isolated stand up. The brief moments that the pair did spend on stage together, in introduction and conclusion, seemed remarkably fumbled and under-rehearsed. The closing gag of subliminal messages of praise for the benefit of any of the reviewers was messy, involving the eternally awkward use of a power point projector and screen, which Pope proceeded to stand in front of for the joke’s short duration.

The comedy was on the whole enjoyable, with Fraser taking on the first twenty-five minutes in what was, he admitted, his first long stand-up set. His nervousness was apparent as he began his routine, with slight blunders and momentary blanks in his opening speech. He warmed up soon enough, although there was a slight restlessness and awkwardness of posture throughout, and his analogy of being on a first date with the audience struck a little too close to home for comfort. For the most part, his material was safe but entertaining nonetheless.  He focused on the usual stalwart dilemmas of the new kid at school, although admittedly with the scenario relocated to Brunei – his very adequate justification for a slightly bizarre hybrid Scottish-Trans-Atlantic accent. Fraser’s strength and wit lay, however, not with his traditionally embarrassing childhood recollections, but with his more abstract and absurd quips. A series of racist jokes, for example, about countries no longer in existence, including a brilliant call for the Aztecs to scale back the doomsday predictions and see the Spanish coming, was a particular highlight.

As the more established of the pair, Pope’s previous experience in dealing with longer sets was apparent and, for the most past, his typically manic, fidgeting style was shown off to the best of its ability. One considerable gripe, nonetheless, was the first section of his act was material recycled from previous smokers and shows. I do appreciate the need and tendency of comics to reuse their finest jokes. This considered, an individual stand up show, particularly one that has been marketed as a novel collaboration, should really be just that, or at least provide its audience with unseen gems, as opposed to taking the part of an extended smoker. This aside, Pope still shone, revelling in his bizarrely descriptive commentary of society at large.

All in all, as Jamie Meets the Pope did have the audience, at times, bent double. I don’t think I was the only who left feeling like they had just been to see a bloated smoker, however. In the end, it was just a shame that two guys who are funny enough by themselves, couldn’t have put a bit of their genius together: who knows what they might have come up with?