Perhaps not a household name like Jon Snow, Trevor McDonald or Robert Peston, but it's unlikely you haven't at least scrolled past at least one of Jonathan Pie's videos on Facebook.
Jonathan Pie, the comedy creation of Tom Walker, is the straight talking, no holds barred news reporter, who has strong opinions on political events - and isn't afraid to share them.
His videos often have him going off on an angry tirade, seemingly aggravated by his imaginary off-camera producer Tim, who is used as a springboard to jump from point to point.
But does this translate well to the stage?
I immediately want to slap this review with a big fat caution that this show was a WORK IN PROGRESS - changes may be made by the time you see it.
However I hope that Walker doesn't feel the need to change too much, the show worked surprisingly well. I confess to having concerns as to how well his act - often viewed in 5 minute segments - would connect with the audience, and if an hour would be too much, but these concerns were put to rest quickly.
Rather than just a series of rants, Pie has attempted to weave a narrative into his work, a purpose for his being on stage, and that certainly helped to string segments together, and break up his occasionally outright aggressive soliloquies.
There were certainly jokes that fell flat, and parts of the show that had me checking the time, but these were few and far between, and will probably be ironed out before the Edinburgh show. There was perhaps a bit too much focus on male urethra insertion comparisons.
What does impress me is Walker's ability to so perfectly capture the mood of his audience, while having a set that is so current. He had plenty of material about political events that happened yesterday - although on reflection I'm not sure if it's 'material' so much as a semi-structured opinionated rant. But then, that is his material, so I don't suppose it matters. He repeatedly and mercilessly attacked the Tory's, so you can imagine how well that went down at Latitude. I don't think the literature tent tends to have raucous rounds of applause.
As it's a work in progress I won't be giving a star rating - but I am very confident that he will have a successful run in Edinburgh.
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Jonathan Pie is soon to be touring, and details of that can be found on his website.
He will be performing over Edinburgh Festival Fringe at the Pleasance Courtyard at 20:00. Tickets and more information are available here.
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