Every Wednesday, I used to miss my aerobics class because of Mark Steel.

Driving from work to the gym, I would turn on the radio to catch his monologues on famous historical figures from Che Guevara to Aristotle - and find myself unable to turn it off.

Steel's series of comedy essays was so funny, so educational and so breathtakingly brilliant, I had to sit in the car and listen to it while everyone else was bounding around in Lycra to cheesy Euro tunes.

One of the reasons why these shows were so irresistible was their moulding of comedy and history into a seamless, clever new genre.

So Steel doing stand-up seemed like a step backwards into the hackneyed formula his series had pushed away from.

His act embodied many of the cliches of that Eighties comedy style - a hard-Left, anti-royalist, alternative view on life like that peddled 15 years ago by Ben Elton and his comedic comrades.

Having said that, he was very funny. His routine about the Queen Mother's death was gloriously tasteless and his invective against boy bands dripped with delicious vitriol.

Even better were the non-political jokes - the idea of a DJ on the Palace Pier giving a traffic report on the hold-ups round the dodgems and the description of his father's stay in a mental hospital were sharply told.

The act had a pleasing symmetry, seeming to amble aimlessly along with no direction for a couple of hours and then honing itself into a life-affirming conclusion with a serious message behind it at the last minute.

That message was all about hanging on to our passion and believing we have the power to change the world.

It might be a platitude but the sentiment was powerful enough to make me glad I missed my aerobics classes on his behalf.