Stephen Lynch is part singer, part songwriter, part comedian and mostly twisted genius, and although relatively un-known in the UK, the queue most of the way down University Gardens is a tribute to how popular he is with his fans.

His material isn’t the usual acoustic fare of love, death and cookies – a small sample of Lynch’s songs covers a wide range of topics: gynaecology, divorce, the Devil, suspecting your girlfriend might (just possibly) be a Nazi, waiting for an AIDS test results, unorthodox goings-on in the Catholic church, Jesus’ lesser known party animal brother and ‘excerpts’ from Anne Frank and Christopher Reeve’s diaries.

Although the gig was plagued with hecklers, one of the highlights Stephen playing one of his best known songs, “Superhero”, and opening up to the crowd for suggestions on what superhero they would be. Amongst the answers were: “A.D.D Man, Captain Obvious and AIDS Man” – at times it was near impossible to discern the answers as the crowd were so loud!

Rod Cohen joined Lynch on stage for the second half of the show on songs such as “She’s Got a Smile”, “Best Friends Song”, “Down to the Old Pub Instead”, and closing with “D&D”. Several times the crowd were treated to a bizarre 1940’s style improv scene!

Even after an encore of songs, the crowd still wanted more, but I for one was thoroughly satisfied with a gig that had me laughing all through the night. If you haven’t heard any of Lynch’s material look him up on YouTube – the website which he admits has allowed his unique brand of musical comedy to spread around the world.

Lynch is back in Scotland in August as part of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. If you get the chance to go see him do so – and don’t worry if you don’t know any of his stuff, as it is at it’s best when you haven’t heard it before! Just remember – don’t take your gran!

Lewis MacKenzie