"If you do have a mobile phone, please switch it on - I wouldn't want you to miss anything important."
So began Ivor Dembina's current show. A 57-year-old Jewish comedian from Hendon, his set, although rooted, as always, in his Jewishness, also drew on his personal life, and was the richer for it.
Anecdotes about his marriages were both funny and poignant. Musings on the Arab and Israeli conflict peppered the monologue - "The only Arab I knew was Peter O'Toole" - and rubbed nicely alongside thoughts about his despised cousin - "She was like a female version of Vanessa Feltz" - and Muslim speed-dating - "In five minutes the two sets of parents get together".
But the subject always returned to his roots. As the man himself says: "I'm a Jew. I'm a worrier, not a warrior."
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