The best comedian is both a little bit wrong and a little bit right according to Olga Kahzan and this is certainly Ben Hurley’s territory. This stand-up comic has the audience on his side – despite the odd joke at our city’s expense: Ecuador is the Nelson of South America (little bit right) and “now for those of you who don’t know what a Māori looks like” (little bit wrong) – for the full hour as he delivers one joke for every country of the world. 195 countries in 58 minutes.

When he was younger Ben had a goal to perform his comedy show in every country. After 16 years on the road he knows that’s not going to happen. Instead, he hits on an ultimately fiendishly clever idea of having every country in his performance and delivers a wry, sometimes coarse, sometimes truthful but always entertaining feast of jokes in which sometimes a country’s name is mentioned in passing and at other times a country gets a full minute of his time.

A haiku for Japan enables him to run off a list of at least 8 other countries (right). Yemen and Oman make him think of his Māori bros and the Facebook pages of people who have names of countries like Solomon Marshall get a right royal bollocking (wrong). Somewhere along the line he gets onto his favourite sport, cricket, but think of how many countries that lets him cover. 

The hour passes quickly and the audience is delighted. Our geography is tested: Belize, Macedonia, Comoros. 195 names is a lot to get through. Towards the end he has us singing along to ‘Africa’ by Toto in order to get through the 54 countries in that continent alone (fun). Hurley is engaging, intelligent and funny. 

Now, with two young daughters, the countries have to come to him. His world has shrunk, he tell us, and he leaves a touching image of the sisters smiling shyly at the camera on the screen he has used as an aid to his romp across planet Earth (all right).  

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