Last year, across a combination of performances at the Fringe and an afternoon in Pleasance London, I managed to see all but one of John-Luke Roberts’ ten Edinburgh shows. The missing one was the elusive It Is Better, a show first conceived as a record during lockdown and very rarely performed live post-Covid. It is a record I own three times over, for various reasons, but have never actually listened to, so I was delighted that Luke was coming to Bristol on tour (and excited to have had advanced warning of that fact by virtue of him messaging me to ask about good venues) with that very show - the collection is complete! So, racing over to the Alma Tavern after an excitable and bruising 30th birthday sports day for a friend of ours, we start with the greatest hits and some new material (including, of course, some of the Spice Girls), and then onto the main event. It’s a lovingly put together show that to some degree brings Stdad-Up and Builds A Monster full circle, with the re-emergence of the Dad “character”, the result presumably of a pandemic spent processing. A typically JLR-esque framing device holds it all together, some beautiful interior jokes, and a surprisingly affecting ending. Superb stuff, and I should really listen to the original.