The thought of bringing out a stringed instrument in front of a baying pub comedy crowd would once have marked a comedian out as, to say the least, ballsy.

No more. Long gone are the days when guitar-wielding funny men were confined to late-Seventies children's TV or abrasive left-wing cabaret. A new generation of sing-a-long comics are taking the scene by storm.

Edinburgh debutant Tom Adams, fresh from appearing on BBC Radio 4's 'Loose Ends', is among the most promising of them.

Slightly prim, impeccably dressed, the bashful West Country-born lad tells blithe comic-tragic yarns that make even the sternest audience's weep with laughter.

Imagine a twenty-first century Frank Spencer with a faint lisp and plum accent recalling, through the medium of song, each of his calamitous mishaps.

The iridescent Adams' somehow hangs on to his optimism despite everything life has to throw at him – from the traumas of speed dating to the uncomfortable aftermath of commuter train vomiting.

“I just want a friend,” he sings nervously of an apparently innocent encounter gone awry - mistaken perhaps as "gay”.

Even strumming as alter-ego Superman, Adams is pitted against the everyday inconvenience of streets bereft of telephone boxes in which to don his super-cape. Adams has charm written all over him.

Baying crowds consider yourselves well and truly disarmed.

Will Henley

Tom Adams is appearing at the PBH Free Fringe at the Royal Mile Tavern until August 28th

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