Stephen K. Amos is at his funniest when he is speaking in tongues. Peering out into the stalls, he switches effortlessly, back and forth, from South London gangsterisms to the staccato Nigerian of his parents’ generation, from a scornful teen patois to a curiously fey accent that sounds almost like an impersonation of Tim McInerney’s hapless sidekick in Blackadder II. “Methinks” is not a word you hear that often on a comedy stage.

The verbal humour is a joy to behold. Which is just as well, because some of the material in this slightly overextended show trundles along well-worn comic-on-the-road tracks. A routine about travelling into the Australian Outback and discovering rednecks isn’t the most devastating of gambits. Sideswipes about the mental capacity of the locals oop north is standard procedure in a hundred clubs.

But as one of the circuit’s veterans, Amos certainly knows how to work a room. Within minutes he has set up a simple but effective class-war riff, bouncing insults off two members of the audience in the front row. This is Oxford, right? Toff territory, innit? At one point it also looked as if the token Americans in the stalls would come in for a battering too, but he relented in the end, thank goodness.

Still, Amos delivers the observational one-liners with such panache that you forgive him. His show is called The Feelgood Factor, and genial uplift is what it delivers, even if he does have an unsettling habit of giggling at his own punchlines.

The first 20 minutes certainly hurtled by in a flurry of brisk jabs and dazzling footwork. Amos tried on a series of personas, and left us wondering which of them, if any, was the real one. (It’s interesting that, given his decision, not too long ago, to go public about his homosexuality, there were next to no gay references.) Later, the transitions became more laboured, and the attempts to generate some laughter at the expense of BNP leader Nick Griffin were curiously limp. Saying he is boss-eyed is not enough.

Tour dates at: www.boundandgaggedcomedy.com

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