Schoolboy filth in all its glory

Let us be perfectly frank. Daniel Kitson is a very rude man. He uses all sorts of naughty swear words. He thinks nothing of standing in front of a room of complete strangers and spouting off about ladies' pink bits and men's protruding organs. He is quite happy to try his luck and ask a member of the audience if she would like to indulge in a spot of bedroom gymnastics with him. It is the sort of display that, were it witnessed by your mother, would have her leading the errant comic into the bathroom and forcing him to eat a whole bar of soap to clean out his filthy mouth.

She would probably follow up this maternal exorcism with a comment about swearing and discussing willies being neither big nor clever. And she would be right. But she would also be missing a vital point: That coming from Kitson, foul language and knob gags are incredibly funny. Take, for example, his musings on the automatic £35 fine the drunken reveller accrues if he 'soils' a London taxi. This, thinks Kitson, is a reasonable price to pay for having a poo in public. See. Neither big nor clever. But right now you're probably having a chuckle at the image.

Of course, even the most wittily clever playground humour starts to wear thin if stretched out to a full hour and a half. Which is why Kitson keeps his routine interesting by lobbing a whole host of off-the-wall stuff in with the behind-the-bikesheds antics. Before he comes on stage he plays a video clip of him being interviewed by 'Happy Cow', in imitation of kids' TV (but with more swearing). He ponders the difficulty of sending text messages while mountain climbing in Cape Town. He plays an audience member at Scrabble, returning to the board every 15 minutes to have his turn and belittle his opponent's efforts. He even knocks marshmallows into the audience with a plastic baseball bat as penance when the (very) occasional joke falls flat.

In fact, much of the set is wonderfully inventive and, one suspects, entirely ad-libbed. When Kitson encounters the comedian's bane that is an audience member's mobile going off, he answers the offending phone to the confusion of the caller but the amusement of everyone else. He gets one member of the crowd to tweak another's nipple (both are male). He discovers a Norwegian comedian in the audience and invites him on stage to perform a joke (in Norwegian), then has the confidence to recover when the newcomer turns out to be funny in his own right.

Of course, it's the crude stuff that bags the most laughs, as Kitson proves by pulling out a joke about having sex with midgets to finish things off. Across the nation, a legion of mothers reach for their scrubbing brushes in unison. Ignore them. He's hilarious. Go see.

Daniel Kitson plays the Comedy Caf? on May 8 and 22.

Daniel Kitson