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After spending time living and working in Australia, Ben is back. Back in England and back performing stand up comedy on the “Authentic Stupidity” tour, a vehicle for him to rail against the madness of contemporary life.

Such is the volume of his writing and tv appearance credits, and over such a long period of time ,that it is easy to forget his achievements as a novelist and playwright. A true literary polymath, it is great to have him back in the UK.

He is defined for me by his comedy on Saturday Night then Friday Night live. Compulsory watching at a time when young children meant that my wife and I could not go out much.

He is almost exactly my age- how have the last forty five years treated him?

The  great news is that he is still very, very funny. Whilst ostensibly eschewing the pitfalls of the old curmudgeon, he cant help himself, and as all of us are now one too, that is just fine.

Such has been the length of absence from the UK stand up stage that he has a lot of material to catch up on and performs for two and a ahalf hours including interval, without props or  audio visual support. I had the feeling that he was road testing what worked and what didn’t in 2024, fortunately most of it did. He even welcomed tory audience members- but  wisely drew the line at Farage.

The second half was stronger than the slightly longer first half. A lengthy, worthy and funny exploration on assisted dying wobbled sometimes between sharp polemic  and knock about poo taste gallows humour without quite being sure where to land.

In the  second half sequences on gender roles and wheely bins and dealing with unexplained noise in the night was comedy of the highest order.

The audience loved it, as I did, the charabanc  continues on nationwide tour.