Russell Howard Live at the Palladium review - feelgood philosophy with added smut

This special, available for a limited time only, acts as a sort of appetiser for the next leg of a mega tour that started in 2023, and still has some months to run. The comic played 13 nights in London on the UK leg and the hour-long Russell Howard Live at the Palladium is taken from those dates.

He's a thinker, Howard tells us. But it's not a brag, more a mundane description of a comic's life; he has a thought, and then works out how to make it funny. It's not difficult, or onerous, and he's lucky to make a living in comedy, he avers. After all, it's not a proper job like the one done by his wife, an NHS doctor.

In a show that covers a lot of ground from wellness necklaces to collective porn-watching and his dad's chainsaw accident, Howard's main point seems to be that despite all the awfulness going on in the world, we're lucky to be alive and he has no time for whingers. His positivity is down to “lucky jizz”, as his dad's sperm could have ended up anywhere. Cue a graphic description of places it might have gone...

That's one of Howard's strengths, being able to turn a philosophical point into a spaff gag. He does it a few times in the hour, moving lightly between decrying those politicians and sections of the media who have let us down to describing how he tried cold-water swimming and “losing my penis for a week”, or how a family holiday ended in him peeing on his brother.

Despite the politics and psychology, Howard's material never delves too deeply into a subject – a couple of smart lines and he's off on to something else, sometimes frustratingly so – but he's very strong on the “branding” of masculinity that has done no favours to so many modern men, resulting in some following Andrew Tate, much to the comic's despair.

The special has a high gag content, and will nicely whet the appetites of those fans seeing him on his extended tour.

• Available until 28 February
• Touring Asia, Europe and the US until 6 May
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