Aidan Jones began his 2022 Fringe season performing to an audience of three but, such is the power of word of mouth recommendation, that he finished this year’s run of Adelaide shows to the enthusiastic applause of a full house in the Nairobi Room at the Producers Hotel.

Jones’s show is called ‘Passing Time’ and centres around his ruminations about his own life and the occasional self-destructive decisions he has made up to this point in his journey.

It is an honest and, at times, confessional show but Jones delivers his self-deprecating material with an appealing degree of warmth and humour.

The heart of the show centres around the fact that no matter what counter-productive life choices he makes – being fired from fourteen jobs to date, is an extreme example – he has always had a solid base of family forgiveness to keep him grounded and able to carry on.

This love of family is conveyed through his sharing of a number of phone messages that he has received from his guru-like grandfather over the years. These are always, seemingly simultaneously, deeply philosophical and absurdly surreal.

Of course, all of the self-therapy that we witness is liberally sprinkled with many original, well-timed comic punchlines and Jones’s infectious laughter at his own follies.

Jones has been plugging away at his craft for a decade now and has clearly learned how to get his audience on side and keep them there. Let’s hope the positive reviews and the chatter on the bush telegraph of social media recommendation see him back in Adelaide playing to the larger crowds his talent deserves in 2023.