Next week, stand-up Daniel Kitson takes his show We Are Gathered Here (a meaningless title — why do they bother?) to Australia. On his website, he writes, pleadingly: “I’ve never ever been to Perth, so have sold something like three tickets in a 12,000 seat arena . . . I would rather do as little advertising or press as possible . . . I promise you it’s good. It wasn’t for a while, but it is now.”

Kitson warmed up in Oxford on Tuesday, and I can confirm two things: he doesn’t do press (we tried hard at The Oxford Times for a preview interview for the gig) and, yes, it is good.

But it’s almost impossible to pin down why. Of all the acts I have seen, his is the one I should like to see on consecutive nights. Could they possibly be the same? I find that hard to believe.

The structure is built around death and dying (“Your world is about to change”, he announced to a 15-year-old at the start of the show — happily, and unusually these days for a stand-up, the only time he hit on the audience), together with flashes at Radio 5 Live, latte coffee and over-familiar snogging. There was also a sensational sequence about cake.

You see the problem. Kitson is an Edinburgh Fringe Perrier Award winner, stammers (effortlessly playing it up to good effect when it strikes), is not one of that long line of comedians who ply their trade on TV or radio and build tours on the back of such media success, doesn’t do cheap swearing, lives alone (as he told us several times), reads the Guardian and can hold an audience in the palm of his hands.

There is an intellectual quality to his performance that draws you in, and a use of serious imagery (I truly believe that his Aunt Angela did die earlier this year) that cleverly set us up for bathos and laughter. Daniel Kitson deserves many more bums on seats in Perth.