Mark Olver

Mark Olver shuffles on to the stage in the modestly populated venue with a newspaper tucked under his arm, a bottle of coke and a packet of mini Oreos in his hands. As he observes, it doesn’t look like he’s meant to be here. However, it quickly becomes clear that it’s all part of an endearingly vulnerable stage persona, trading deftly on the fact that he looks "like a child who’s waiting to be picked up for some kind of trip".

The 32 year-old Bristolian’s day job is as the warm-up artist for Deal Or No Deal, and he’s clearly made great use of the experience to hone his gift for audience interaction. This is the strongest element of the show, warm and personal but with a real sense of risk. He picks on a young couple who are sitting squashed between the young man’s parents and probes their familial sensitivities around sex, going far enough to produce uncomfortable giggles, but never so far as to be seedy.

There's some great material as well, which rings more fun out of describing an endoscopy and a funeral than it would be reasonable to expect. The delivery is sometimes a bit slow: a minor frustration, partly because I would have liked to hear more than we had time for. Olver won’t set the world on fire, but you’ll be glad you spent an hour in his company. And you might even get an Oreo.