Irish comic Jimeoin – or “The� Jimeoin, for judging by the cover of this release it seems he’s become a definitive article – must be doing something right. He’s from overseas, yet us often frightfully parochial Aussies don’t seem to mind him hogging our stages, our tellies, our cinema screens, our CD players – hell, he’s even advertising our piss now! Perhaps the reason is because – oh! A monster’s walked through the door!

Right, where was I? Ah, yes... it’s (The) Jimeoin’s talent at managing to combine most every facet we love in comedy within the one, single, solitary, receding-hairlined body type thing he possesses – from physical to observational to musical to good old out and out crap pub gags – all mixed in with a delightful line in absurdity and at times down right nonsensicalness (which, believe it or not, is actually a real word!). His added ability to veer off on mad tangents at any given opportunity, yet still eventually managing to get back on track at some point – a la the great Billy Connolly – is also rather appealing.

All Over the Shop is essentially a stand-up gig from Dublin, performed way back in 2001. Why “essentially�? Well, they only had two cameras, so the audience reaction shots which are interspersed throughout have been taken from a gig in Perth. Which is all rather strange, but also quite apt in some sort of hippy, trippy cosmic way and certainly in keeping with the title of it all. For around 80 minutes (The) Jimeoin does his thang, as casual as you like in cruddy old blue jeans with turned up cuffs and a white t-shirt. From rendering all future supermarket shopping experiences had by any viewer forever changed to giving away the secrets of peeing – he’s even been spying on the girls it would seem – to the stresses of multiball and sending out a big shout to the much underrated Bunsen burner, all manner of the little and big things in life are touched upon, raising more than the odd giggle along the way.

Two video cameras, one stage show – one average DVD transfer. And if you expected any different then you’re a bloody nong. It’s all clear enough in its boring old full-framishness, in fact it’s fairly detailed considering, with only a couple of minor instances of aliasing. It’s all decidedly bright, in fact blacks are more of a murky dark grey, there’s no invasive layer change and basically it’s pretty good for such fare. Really, if all you care about is picture quality over programme content then you’d be far better off going out, grabbing a hold of some big budget Hollywood movie and getting your rocks off over its transfer instead. Or perhaps an even better alternative would be getting a life...

Sound is Dolby Digital 2.0. It’s kind of like a toilet – it does its job suitably well (and hopefully allows you the same courtesy), without being anything particularly spectacular or lacklustre. It’s just kind of there – unless you live in Toorak, of course, where your dunny is probably gold plated and super-ornate, or carved to look like an elephant, or – share the wealth you tight, overpaid bastards! If you have trouble understanding (The) Jimeoin’s lilt you can also resort to quite serviceable subtitles – but when mega-huge insurance conglomerates use his voice for advertising you’d think it doubtful that anybody would have such troubles.

What is there in the way of extras? Animated menus and a whole four pages of biography! Woo! How utterly exciting, colour me cock-a-hoop.

If, like seemingly most of the country, you get off on Jimeoin’s delightfully silly comedy then this DVD should prove quite the worthy little investment. It may be nothing special in any of those DVD-ish departments we love so much – like video, audio or extras – but it delivers on the most important thing – sheep. Erm, programme content.

Oh, how slack of me, I almost forgot... Jimeoin was very good; he used the whole of the stage...