We’ll get to the man who may be the youngest person to die on a cruise ship in a minute. But no review of ours can begin without a few drinks… and today’s. Were. Spectacular.

We made our regular pilgrimage to Cocktail Geeks to explore their latest theme – Studio Ghibli – and once again they surpassed expectations. We could have run the full menu (we only missed three), but mid-session we discovered that the mixology geniuses (genii? genie-ii?) behind this great spot had opened a new bar just off the Cowgate. As we were heading that way anyway, we booked in.

Skoll & Hati is a Norse gods–themed bar with an axe for a door handle and a bar that uses an eternal blue-flame hearth as a splashback.

It’s a very welcome addition to the Edinburgh drinking scene, and the Jörmungandr may be the greatest cocktail I have ever drunk – and the perfect aperitif for a night of comedy at the Monkey Barrel.

John Tothill is one of those clowns who gives the distinct impression that the show hasn’t quite started yet. He keeps telling us it’s about to. Any minute now. Just one more thing. And of course, that is the show. What looks like amiable faffery is, in fact, tightly wound craft.

Tothill has the air of an English teacher who flirts with the rugby team (his own description, and painfully accurate), gently digressing through tales of the propaganda-fuelled Crab Museum in Margate and the fact that this show’s time slot had “driven a horse and carriage through dinner plans” – the solution to which, apparently, is that we should all be more Spanish.

There’s a smack of Billy Connolly in the looseness of his delivery – the conversational drift. Lines that would look mild on paper bloom in performance thanks to precise inflection and a masterful sense of timing. He knows exactly how long to let a phrase dangle before snapping it back for the laugh.

The evening’s strangest and strongest thread concerns Edward Dando, a Victorian thief notorious for overindulging in oysters. It’s a beautifully unnecessary callback that gradually reveals itself as structural glue, paralleling Tothill’s own tale of powering through a near-deadly incident of appendicitis at the Fringe rather than going to hospital. The show must go on.

And speaking of callbacks: my opening line hints at the fact that our comic recently took a stint on a cruise ship, where he lost 98% of the audience on his first night. Fortunately, Tothill is with his own tribe here, and his glow is a joy to bathe in.

In its entirety, this show is absurd, faintly alarming, and impressively well engineered. The digressions are the architecture. The chaos is choreographed.

We had a great time at this delightful, meticulously constructed wobble of a show. So unless you have a penchant for token BGT clowns in a floating gods’ waiting room, we’d recommend giving him a shot.

Clown Stars: * * * *

@Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh

If you would like to catch John Tothill touring ‘This Must Be Heaven’, details are available on ents24.