No wonder Dara O’Briain bestrode the New Theatre stage twice this week to great audience reception. I do not think there is a funnier, more intelligent, faster stand-up working in that congested world today.

He is urbane, almost self-deprecating, on TV shows like Mock The Week, and the best operator by far on the Three Men… series. His physical presence is imposing, but no more threatening than that of an affable landlord. O’Briain challenges constantly — he is extravagantly and volubly in all our faces all the time, fecking away entirely acceptably while letting us hear the cogs in his brain click at all times.

From a couple of years ago, I remembered quickly how well he plays the audience: he doesn’t overwhelm the three or four he picks upon, but rather works them over remorselessly — urging them to feed him with a word or line he can move with. On Monday evening, he was genuinely thrown by someone in the circle who yelled the name of the real ante-natal nurse O’Briain and his wife had been involved with; we saw a true professional rebounding and making the most of a curious incident.

An image of Nicole Kidman wearing 14 layers of clothing rests with me, as does that of sitting next to a crocodile on a plane (separate comic outpourings!). A couple of prepared bits of business hung listlessly in the air for a few minutes, but his rat-tat-tat delivery of devilish humour makes you apologise internally for even contemplating using the words “work in progress”.

A few hours before he arrived in Oxford, Dara O’Briain posted this on Twitter: “Jersey last night. Only show of the tour held in haunted hilltop fort, converted into a leisure centre. Previous occupants: some Nazis.” I’ve no idea what the St. Helier audience was like, but, although he told us we were weird and strange, we lapped it up and roared for more.