Dara O Briain 

St George's Hall

One thing you should know before reading this review - I love Dara O Briain.

He can do no wrong for me, I see his face and I laugh - and not just because of the long-standing joke about him being the Mega Bus man/ Despicable Me Gru’s doppelganger.

And I'm not alone, he walked on the stage at St George's Hall to rapturous applause and cheers and even before he spoke the bloke next to me was laughing constantly – and didn’t stop.

The show he brought to Bradford, Crowd Tickler, is one I've seen before. Last year my husband bought us tickets to see Dara at his spiritual home of Vicar Street in Dublin - but this felt like a new routine with some familiar jokes thrown in.

Dara has the gift of the gab like no-one else and so every performance is different.

He involved the audience without picking on them and has a quick wit which leads to a fast-paced, almost manic journey of surreal improvisation. Tonight, it started with an audience member's job in packaging and ended with Charles Dickens and Winston Churchill topping the bill at St George's Hall, with Brett from row D and a suffragette jumping out of a box of polystyrene balls under a trapdoor to scare them.

And, like many good comedians, he does his research. In Dublin a few jokes about Gaelic football went over our heads, but he said he wouldn’t do those lines in England because they’d mean sod all to us - instead his opening in Bradford was about the world’s shiniest floors in The Broadway and the amount of bulbs the city uses to spell out ‘Happy Deepawali’.

He also covered how parents raise children’s expectations by teaching them Y is for Yacht in ABC books, the psychology of what makes stockings sexy and pop socks so very unattractive and the plots of ‘must see’ Norwegian serial killer crime dramas.

His packed routine and quick delivery left people howling with laughter and those who hadn’t seen him before will be loving him too after another brilliant show.