Judging by the claps and cheers filling a full house before he shuffled on stage, David Sedaris would have been preaching to the converted had he solemnly recited random extracts from the phonebook .

A bestselling author with impeccable comedic timing, Sedaris resembled a lecturer, peeping above a large wooden desk.

On a previous tour date, he admitted, one reviled fan defined him as a “dreadful little man”, having dared a writer who routinely deals in deadpan to add a shocking inscription to their copy of one of his books.

Sedaris has a limitless ability to pinpoint the ridiculous in the mundane, his observational set pieces so acute they make most raconteurs seem entirely fraudulent.

Several ideas ended in someone being shot in the head, and his litter-picking remains obsessive, with a protracted rant on the debris near his Rackham home – the author loves Sussex, or at least considers it vastly superior to Texas – illustrating his intense need for order.

Sedaris’s pride at having a rubbish truck named after him was tangible. To an absurdist too modest to feign anything but joy at questions from the floor, you suspect making the locale slightly cleaner supersedes his literary prowess.