Comedy review: Giacinto Palmeri

UNLESS you are as smart and dedicated to your craft as Jimmy Carr or as compelling as Jerry Sadowitz, charm plays a part in any comic’s appeal.

LAUGHING HORSE @ THE COUNTING HOUSE (VENUE 170)

Giacinto Palmieri has charm like Tuscany has wine. His comedy is mainly little tales of the trials of an Italian living in London, of difficulties with dipthongs and frustrations with phrasal verbs. We have 3,762 phrasal verbs. That’s a lot of frustration.

Giacinto (who prefers to be called Jack) has taken as his role model some bloke called Zola who is a football manager, is now a British citizen and is wary of social networks – although his ideas for Facebook are brilliant. He first learned English travelling on the Tube in London – which left him with a limited vocabulary, but has now mastered an impressive array of idioms and surmounted the ‘th’ problem. He is still a mammone (mummy’s boy), as a mid-set conversation proves, but Mama would be proud of him here. It is just a half-hour show, but it is lovely and it is free. A charming, entertaining Fringe experience.

Until 30 August. Today 12:45pm.