I am astounded that there is a person in Britain who doesn't know who Michael McIntyre is. But after telling people I was going to see his new 'Macnificent' show, his first stand-up tour since 2018, I can confirm his name is not instantly recognisable.
This is no doubt due to his lack of swagger, of larger-than life braggadocio. He's not your run-of-the-mill comedian at all.
He's like the very funny friend you love to go for a drink with, the one you know will send you into fits of giggles sending himself up and impersonating the people around him, but never with a trace of malice. He's funny enough not to have to resort to putting people down.
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The Manchester crowd seem especially happy to see him tonight, given his recent hospitalisation with kidney stones forced him to cancel two shows. Now all he needs to do is make them cry laughing.
Joking that he's always wanted to announce he'd 'lost a stone' but not in quite that way, he launches into a detailed description of what happened in the doctor's office, and an imagined, and most amusing, sequel in the bedroom.
He then moves on to the pleasures of wine drinking, the snobbery associated with it, and the lies we tell ourselves about that 'little splash' we've just drunk.
A collection of skits about the most humdrum things in life you can imagine - yawning, sleeping, farting, follows, all delivered with an impressive array of facial expressions.
Food and football are on the menu too, with a cleverly observed piece about different types of teenage boys on the football field for the parents in the audience.
There's an imaginative bit about the pandemic, which at first you worry might feel dated, but this is Michael after all, and he offers his own unique story involving pink balloons and featuring an irresistible dance around an Amazon delivery man.
Despite his recent health issue, he is certainly on form, positively fizzing with energy in fact.
He's a little sweary, but not in that aggressive, drunken way that most comedians tend to favour. He's more like an over-enthusiastic schoolboy who doesn't really mean to let the four letter words slip out.
There is no obvious highlight to the show, no one bit that really shines, and there are more satisfied smiles than split sides. But his audience gets what they expect, and all delivered in that reassuringly self-deprecating and endearingly silly way.
