SIR Tom Jones was not the only big voice performing in York last Friday.

Al Murray, The Pub Landlord, who is always larger, louder and lewder than life, had four shows to play in two days and he didn't hold back, even at five in the afternoon on post-work Friday on day one of the inaugural Great Yorkshire Fringe festival.

The pontificating publican had company in his pop-up summer saloon in the jocund form of the Charley Farley Sunday Band, who purveyed pub knees-up versions of closing-time favourites before Murray swaggered on stage, spilling his beautiful British beer, to join them in a Ska version of It Ain't Half Hot Mum.

This was his first outing to York since his Thanet South General Election campaign ended in defeat. "I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?" sang the band, mocking him with the Beck hit.

You couldn't keep the rabble-rousing Guvnor down, however, as he worked his way through the audience with his trademark inquisitions built around occupations. He discovered there were three coppers in the house. "Good night to be a criminal in York," he said.

Murray's Little Englander caricature fixed his targets on ISIS with his unique diplomacy. "Send in the Red Arrows to sky-write" an insult, he suggested, while mixing up C S Lewis's Aslan with Islam.

Later he decided the EU referendum by means of a Space Hopper race between audience members, and the brilliant mimic in Murray had him sending up four types of Scot, the Welsh and the Irish alike in a new routine. "The Yorkshire voice sounds like a skipping CD," he ventured.

Amid the bull-necked bellicosity, there was a serious point in his analysis of what it meant to be British today. "We're a vague nation, aren't we," he said. "The Brit-ish", before the absurdist took over in his championing of the Incy Wincy Spider's virtues.

The Pub Landlord exited with a scornful variation on Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport at Rolf Harris's expense, ending two breathless hours of brute-force pub philosophy.