Edinburgh Festival 2013: Glenn Wool, review It would be reasonable to describe Glenn Wool as one of the perennial bridesmaids of the Edinburgh Fringe, were he even that. For not only has the UK-based Canadian not won the coveted Comedy Awards, he has never - criminally - even been included on the shortlist. To look at, he might almost be an Estonian Jack Black (and wearing, by the way, what must surely be the Worst Waistcoat In The World). His delivery careering artfully between rock-and-roll swagger and fire-and-brimstone preacher, he deals with any miscreants in the audience with a unique mixture of self-assured welly and unmistakable warmth. After a disposable opening film of head-banging puppets, the start of This Road Has Tolls proper is a relative slow-burn (calculated, I think), as Wool admits that his recent, initially promising spell in Los Angeles ultimately came to nothing, while also casting a caustic outsider's eye over the royal baby and the British honours system. Unusually for him, one joke - a Thatcher gag from early in his career - seems entirely misconceived, as if he thinks she was known as the Iron Maiden rather than the Iron Lady. He is boldly entertaining on Operation Yewtree and how it saved us from the dullness of the horsemeat scandal, and reveals a nice new line in puns. But, as ever with Wool, it's his stories that really raise the temperature in the room. The three that stand out feature an ill-fated flight involving a slipped disc and a Buddhist monk, his Alzheimer's-ridden grandfather, and some elderly Jews from New Jersey. Full of imaginative flourishes and conveyed with near-deranged theatricality, they're all, as you might guess, in some way near-the-knuckle. But they also build to cracking punchlines, and, like the entire set, are essentially a passionate call for common sense. Which, come to think of it, takes us back to this year's Awards panel...