MOST contemporary comedians tend to patronise the same knocking shop of ideas, a kind of cathouse off comic chic. Here, they're pimped gags of boozers, losers and substance abusers the current stock in trade for stand up chucklemeisters. Jack Dee might well visit that self same bordello, but the tricks this John scores are wilfully perverse.

Though his scowl faced delivery gives the impression of a particularly irked pit bull, Dee live is a curiously amiable proposition. His trademark chummy arrogance wins the audience over instantly, and we stay with him for more than two hours of cleverly drawn observational comedy. He has a knack for voices, a talent for gesture and a real feel for the absurdity of the everyday all underpinned by a subtle, gentle irony. His swaggering, casual gait masks real artistry: he expertly uses back links and cross references to gum together his skewed narratives.

The sketches are from the top drawer. Many concern themselves with the stuff we buy in supermarkets, the way we abase ourselves at the altar of wanton consumption. He brings up those packets of fun sized pizzas: "since when does fun have a size?" asks the deadpan dynamo.

He also revels in a series of glorious what if scenarios. What if Neil Armstrong hadn't been first on the moon; what if it had been an Englishman?:

We wouldn't have had a grandiloquent speech about small steps and giant leaps, we would have had some bespectacled Norris going: "Oooh, the trouble we had getting here".

The chortlefest occasionally descends into the scatological: (he is English!) but it's never lavatorial and there's an important difference. He's too polished an act to have to fall back on base instincts. The material is all new, trawled from the dizzying whirlpool of the late Nineties zeitgeist. He'll be flogging it on the telly for the next while, so I recommend you taste it now while the catch is fresh.