Two years ago we went to the MICF showing of John Robertson’s A Nifty History of Evil,a delightfully macabre little show.

John is back in town with his new show Blood & Charm,which was a smashing success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

It’s an amazingly grim, yet somehow very amusing mix of bedtime stories and personal anecdotes for very fucked up people (i.e. regular readers of this blog…. or as regular as you would be if there were more regular posts, but I’ll still blame you for this… somehow). Jokes about being a child’s entertainer that gets to punch a child in the face at a party. Childrens’ fairytales about how little matchstick girls fall into solipsistic doubt before freezing to death. Anecdotes about his previous girlfriend that liked razors more than Johnny Depp or how his father that happened to be a massive fan of slipknots (not the band). The kind of thing that would make a genuininely good childrens book for adults like Go The Fuck To Sleep.

Even without the manic grin that can only be likened to Death putting on a flesh mask, it is all genuinely funny. There is no need for nervous laughter or the “I’m laughing because the only other option is crying” sort of chuckles because John has managed to find a perfect form of self-deprecation that can only be termed “autoschadenfreude”. If you are going to see a show at the comedy festival, it better bloody well be So You’ve Decided To Host An Orgy, but if you’re going to see more than one, then this better be on the list as well.

Shows are only daily at 10pm at the Victorian Trades Hall in Carlton.

Tickets ($20/$15conc) are available through the MICF website and box office or at the Trades Hall box office.