Simon Fox is one of those slightly old-school comics who works across the interface of the established circuit and more mainstream venues – as happy on stage at Jongleurs as he is on a cruise ship.

He’s certainly an entertainer ahead of being an artist, with a showman’s flair for backchat and badinage – but a reckless disregard for originality. When he’s bantering with the crowd, clichéd lines come popping out of his mouth like a panful of popcorn. But he hits them hard and he hits them fast, which is why he’s most often found compering.

The emphasis of the whole act is on banging out the gags, but seasoned comedy-goers will have heard a lot of this before A lot of the lines are familiar, and if they’re not, the overall stance behind them certainly is. He’s not looking for anything new here, and indeed gags about short-lived fads such as feng shui still reside in his set, or George Bush and his suggestive surname. He’s gigging like it’s 1999!

Yet his cheerily smart-arse posture and relentless delivery keeps the energy levels lively, and his mechanical craft in telling the jokes is faultless. He’s not above using any trick to get a reaction, even wheeling out a banjo (cue inevitable Deliverance-style inbreeding joke) for little other purpose then getting the crowd clapping along.

And that about sums him up; he can press any button to manipulate a crowd, even a cynical one. But he hasn’t got anything to say, which would make him uninteresting over anything more than a brief set to lift the spirits. Another reason why he’s best suited to the MC’s role.