Simon Munnery - 19 Mar, The Stand

Simon Munnery is not one of us. "I iz not spaeking lick yo; cos I iz nit lick yo," he says on one of his bizarre CDs. If he's not lambasting audiences by making them wear dunces caps or performing an entire show with a bucket on his head, he's hiding behind a range of equally strange personas: the Banksy-like Alan Parker or the kettle-hat wearing 'League Against Tedium' being two of his most celebrated.

Odd then that today's set at The Stand largely consisted of straight stand-up comedy: one man and his mic. In clothes seemingly borrowed from David Baddiel, he relates a five-minute beery anecdote about the characters in his local pub. Where was the terror we had expected? Maybe he's one of us after all.

After some interesting new material (including a sketch about a trainee chef abusing an aubergine), there was a comfortable return to form as Munnery dons his well-travelled tweed hat for The True Confessions of Sherlock Holmes: a brilliant monologue exposing the world's most famous detective as a coke-addled accidental success. "Yes, it was him what done it and here's why!"

Munnery is a pleasure to watch in any of his guises and it was fun to see him perform largely without props, using only his sharp wit and analyses of everyday situations to get the laughs. [Robert Wringham]