Dom McGovern: Prize Hog review – a sharp standup who is sure to go stellar

The Chicken Shop Date co-writer gives a gossipy, erudite account of his relationship with how he looks in this assured debut

At a fringe noticeable for the polish even of its rookie standups, here’s another debut showing no signs of callowness. The co-writer of Chicken Shop Date with Amelia Dimoldenberg, you wouldn’t bet against Dom McGovern being a TV fixture soon, such is the smoothness – and good humour – characterising this account of the Hounslow man’s troubled relationship with his body. So are we talking about men’s mental health? Not if McGovern has anything to do with it. His scepticism of that phenomenon, and the performative (straight) male vulnerability it entails, forms one amusing section of his show.

There’s precious little emoting or “trauma comedy” at play in Prize Hog, which doesn’t soft-soap McGovern’s difficulties with body dysmorphia and bulimia, but doesn’t over-dramatise them, either. They’re all just fodder for his sharp and gossipy chat with the audience, about a recent trip to Brazil (suboptimal destination for travellers already unconfident about their looks), and about Jesus and his unhelpful dieting example. Brought up in an Irish Catholic family, McGovern couldn’t ignore the influence of that “ripped little twink on the cross” – but 00s slimming culture cast a darker pall. At least until he undergoes therapy, under the charge of a South African counsellor rejoicing in the name Wendy Christmas.

All this will be Christmas come early for fans of urbane and camp comedy, of the type practised before him by Tom Allen and others. McGovern loves to flash his erudition, and his crowd-work is less duty, more infectious delight. It’s a show that will particularly connect with fellow children of the early 00s, with its running jokes about Jedward and invocation of Gillian “You Are What You Eat” McKeith.

McGovern, and many of his generation, developed fraught relationships with how they looked. But this is less a tale of self-loathing than of McGovern’s journey back to full (whisper it) mental health: the friends he makes in group therapy, the dubious politics of his therapist. Mixed blessing it may be for a man ill at ease with his looks, but I’d guess we will soon be seeing McGovern a lot more often.

• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 30 August
• All our Edinburgh festival reviews

• In the UK, Beat can be contacted on 0808-801-0677. In the US, help is available at nationaleatingdisorders.org or by calling ANAD’s eating disorders hotline at 800-375-7767. In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is at 1800 33 4673. Other international helplines can be found at Eating Disorder Hope