Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2014 – REVIEW – Jack Dee’s Help Desk ***.5

Jack Dee’s Help Desk, Assembly George Square 6:30pm, until 24 August, See venue for ticket availability and pricing

Known for his generally glum persona, Jack Dee’s one-week run in Edinburgh was marked with very apt, dark skies before his Tuesday evening show. The audience were drenched while queueing for his new format, ‘Help Desk’, the content of which is as unpredictable as the Scottish weather.

If you have a problem, from the mundane to the major, this is your opportunity to submit it to Jack and his team of 4 comedians who differ each night. This variable is vital to the success of the evening, with another variable being the problems which people are willing to submit and their chance of being chosen and discussed. On this occasion, Mark Steel, Hannah Gadsby, Lou Sanders and Clive Anderson joined Jack to delve into the back-stories of a number of the dilemmas, attempting to conjure humour and some sort of solution from each scenario.

The production didn’t quite pack as big a punch as might be expected from such a talented five-piece; the exchanges between the audience and the helpers sometimes dragged. Having said this, it is a refreshing concept and many astute observations were made. It would be excellent to see this show polished and perhaps in a TV or radio format.