Nish Kumar

Four stars

Brighton Dome, Brighton, Friday, February 1

AS A comedian you have to be working with what happens around you.

Little did Nish Kumar know, when he arrived at Brighton Dome, that he’d have an extra antagonist in his politically charged stand up show.

That antagonist came in the form of a man called Chris who decided to make his presence known to the audience as he heckled opening act Rose Matafeo.

Rose was getting good laughs with her anecdotal jokes about feminism when this heckler chose to try and be funny in response.

Rose handles it fantastically well, especially as she claims she’s “never had a heckler before”.

Her performance is hilarious and does a great job of warming the crowd up for Nish.

There are big cheers when Chris is ejected from the building.

Nish himself then starts his set by berating the now departed heckler and making sure the same consequences face anyone else who decides to try to interrupt the show in such a manner.

Once that’s out of the way, what follows is an hour and 20 minutes of brilliant stand-up that covers the likes of Brexit, religion and even the time Nish was nearly arrested in America.

Star of the hit BBC show The Mash Report, Nish knows his politics.

Anyone going to see this show who isn’t a fan of the news or satire based on world events would have been sorely disappointed by this evening.

But that does not seem to be the case.

Whether it’s talking about the Leave voters he thinks are “idiots”, being enraged by racial profiling or getting recognised as a fatter version of himself, Nish has an amazing ability to keep the audience laughing from start to finish.

Leaving the stage to a flurry of applause, this could be the comedy tour of 2019...just don’t be like Chris.

Jamie Walker