The title of this show – Scholar, Smuggler, Prisoner, Scribe – provided a sweet but apparently pompous précis of Marks’s life, but really only accounted for half of his performance at Komedia.

True, he’s toured his life story previously, but the show he brought to Brighton on the second night of this tour felt all at once unfocused yet insightful.

The first half took as direction the smuggler and prisoner elements of his life – the latter offered as “a cautionary tale” to anyone considering following a similar path.

With his croaky voice and a small table upon which a trio of drinks waited to aid delivery, the Welshman held forth hilariously on everything from his lengthy dealings with an infant IRA to teaching rapper Notorious BIG the three ways to employ a semi-colon while in the US’s most notorious jail.

After a break, the evening descended into something of a student night, with a presentation on how best to market narcotics were they ever legalised. Certainly there were belly laughs but it felt like Marks was compromising his Oxford-accredited intelligence and that Brightonian club-goers were nothing but potheads looking for cheap, raucous laughs.

A shame, as Marks’s colourful, chequered history and obvious integrity – however contentious – deserved more.