If you fancy a change from the usual stand-up fare, book up quickly for Chris Cox’s hugely entertaining Control Freak – last year he sold out early on. It’s not quite comedy or magic, but a mongrel hybrid of both, featuring mind-reading tricks in the style of Derren Brown. Cox moves with a manic energy, presumably to distract you from all the subliminal messaging going on; there’s plenty of audience participation, and the fact that not every trick comes off as slickly as it might is all the more convincing, as the outcome is always close enough to what was predicted to reassure the audience that his techniques really do work. The grand finale is a short film, apparently locked away from the beginning of the show, and if I tell you any more it would spoil the impact, but you will spend the rest of the festival trying to work out how he did it.
