Dan Rath is miserable, hobbling on stage with the air of a man who looks like he’d rather crawl into a hole and die than stand onstage and tell jokes. He’s befuddled to the point of depression, a misfit from society who wants to move to a lonely island so he can escape a world where there are 12 different types of milk, and water bottles are growing increasingly complicated. His guise as a terminally awkward, crowd-averse misanthrope is the backbone for this short, sharp and wildly funny series of one-liners that play on his life as the world’s premier outsider. 

If Dave’s Joke Of The Fringe award was still running, it’s a safe bet that the shortlist would simply be a compendium of Rath’s finely-crafted gags, so sharp and compact that you’ll want to file them in the back of your head to tell friends later (though excitably explaining his one-liners would miss their key ingredient: his deadpan Aussie drawl). Following in the lineage of comics like Steven Wright, his shambolic persona belies an incredible sense of craft. This is one of the most confident performances you’ll find anywhere at the Fringe, not least because you get the impression he has another 500 superlative gags in his back pocket. 

Dan Rath: Tropical Depression, Monkey Barrel Cabaret Voltaire, until 24 August, 6.40pm.