Sean Lock

There's funny. And there's Sean Lock. And I prefer Sean Lock.

Never thrusty or hectic, his jokes don't always generate wave after wave of laughter. He builds up, then backs away, but his skill at surfing the occasional giggly silence is majestic.

Even his trademark suit is hard to describe: reddish brown or brownish red? Like much else in his act, it's on a quiet knife edge. In a show that's a study in variety of tone, some gags have a nice L-shaped trajectory: "My nephew's dyslexic, but it took a long time to diagnose because he's really stupid." Or he can affect a more discursive style, miming the convulsion he suffers when a moment of shame catches him by surprise.

Lock's word choice is precise: Crazy golf, he told us, didn't quite provide the "mayhem" he was expecting. And as for his near-topical side, how can you fault a man whose reason for not having a mobile phone is that there's no receiver to slam down at the end of an argument. This is combined with a great visual impression of a man frenziedly trying to stab the off button.

Hopeless, of course. He even conducts an auto-interrogation, chiding himself for wasting our time with all this fruitless speculation. Lock's grin, as he leans back on a ticking, outstretched left leg, is cheerily, illogically defiant. He can't win, but that makes him one of the great humorists of our time. "I'm a good hummer," he says. "I could fill the Albert Hall, but people aren't prepared to pay money for that." Book it now and let's see.

Sean Lock