It’s hard to think of many comics who write and deliver a one-liner quite like Stewart Francis. This skilful Canadian has absolutely mastered the art of the brutally efficient gag, packing one brilliant punchline after another into his devastatingly funny set.

His rich voice seems more suited to a seductive late-night radio show than ribald comedy, giving him an unmistakeable air of authority. But his fantastic jokes are unremittingly daft, given extra weight by the fact he’s telling them – mostly - with such straight-faced seriousness.

The density of the lines is incredible. Just after you take a mental note of one solid-gold joke to astound your friends later, he’ll hit you with another, and never with a word wasted. The human memory just can’t cope with such an onslaught of superlative comedy.

His best lines are absolutely peerless, encapsulating entire thought processes into a sentence or two, yet still containing a brilliant twist to capture a laugh from an unexpected direction.

In isolation, there’s a sizeable minority of ideas that other comics could have come up with – up to the point of taking a subtly disguised approach to ‘Doctor, doctor,’ jokes. Yet he unfailingly gives them enough of a unique angle to surprise - and the anticipation of another priceless gem always keeps you primed for laughter.

The otherwise deadpan persona also benefits from a raft of sparingly-used trickery, from high-pitched Chimpunkesque warbling to brief visual jokes. He makes callbacks to previous material, then draws attention to that, then calls back to the callback. His delivery technique is as faultless as his joke-writing – and that takes some doing.

In short, one of the best one-line merchants ever.