This was a painful gig.

He might come across on telly as a friendly and harmless aging hippy, but in reality Bill Bailey was merciless, relentlessly forcing hilarious image after hilarious scenario upon his helpless audience who could only double over, shriek or cry with laughter.

His chief weapons were that lovely rich vocabulary, his love of the sublime (the Rift Valley, a Patagonian sunrise) twinned the offensively mundane (fruit yoghurt, a Renault Kangoo) and that constantly brilliant imagination bubbling away, not content with conjuring up one brilliant absurdist idea for a punchline but piling image upon image.

You didn’t expect to hear phrases like “tinder for witch hazel” or "Cockney drive-by massage" ever yet they made perfect comedic sense in Bailey’s weird and wonderful world.

Even easy targets like “pig bothering” David Cameron, “blood sucking” Ian Duncan Smith and the fatuous One Direction were skewered in a unique and fresh way.

Anecdotes about a holiday in the Northern Lights and meeting Sir Paul McCartney, both of which went very badly, were the funniest things I have heard all year.

Bailey says that tourism not bombs (flip-flops on the ground) fight off extremism but I reckon just two hours with this torturer of mirth would have even the most committed of jihadis begging for mercy.

Five stars