Luke Sproule watches Alan Davies as he brings electricity to a roaring crowd at Oxford's New Theatre

Fans of Alan Davies the super-sleuth Jonathan Creek or QI champion need a word of warning: Alan Davies the stand-up is a very different beast.

If you’ve been laughing at his TV performances you’ll almost certainly find his latest tour Little Victories hilarious, but you’ll be laughing at a darker comedian than the scatter-brained eccentric bantering away with Stephen Fry.

Davies starts Little Victories by doing a bit of detective work to get to the bottom of just how old his audience is. “Students? Hopefully we’ve priced them out.

“Parents with kids..? I can hear the weariness.

“Born in the 1930s? Well done for finding the front door of the house and coming along.”

Thankfully the 1930s crew — and there were more than a few here — are as likely to spend two hours roaring with laughter as anyone else in the crowd.

They can remember the 1970s vividly, which is not a bad thing as Davies moans his way through a decade dominated by his grumpy, penny-pinching father, his annoying younger brother and his peers at boarding school.

Not that you need to be over 40 to appreciate the school trip to Italy where, drunk on two bottles of lager, the public schoolboy got in a fight with a bunch of suave Italians. And anyone with an even occasionally grumpy dad will sympathise with Davies’s endless attempts to force his father to allow them to eat blackberry jam.

If you haven’t got kids it might be harder to connect with Alan Davies the family man, but that doesn’t make his desperation at trying to deal with his constantly screaming daughter less hilarious.

Whether he’s telling tales of his spendthrift childhood, his deteriorating sex life or awkward schooldays Davies always seems on the edge of madness and despair.

He’s full of electricity, like the Davies of QI, but it’s a kind of manic energy rather than the bubbly charm casual fans might be used to. And there’s time for more serious moments too when he mulls over his dad’s dementia, which has him putting the kettle in the microwave at 3am.

Some might take time to adjust to the more adult Davies of stand-up, but once he gets you laughing it’s hard to stop. Not so much a Little Victory as a big triumph.