THE Burning Duck Comedy Club looks set for a hot start to the New Year at the Black Swan Inn in York with Tuesday's show Lee Kyle: Is Burning This Place To The Ground.

"Hi, Lee here. I’m typing this," types Kyle. "I want you to come to my show. There. I’ve just come out and said it. I’m going to say all of the funniest things I know how to say and there’s a twist near the end. I will try really hard to give you a good bit of comedy. Should probably have played it cooler than this."

The 8pm gig features Spice Girls tribute act-turned wrestler, turned comedian Kyle on his debut stand-up tour. "“It's basically about making grand plans that never come to fruition," says the 37-year-old South Shields comic.

"But it’s way sillier than that sounds. I can proudly say that people will leave the show not having learned anything, except for a pretty excellent fact about Butch Dingle from Emmerdale.”

During his decade-long career as a professional wrestler, Kyle battled alongside WWE superstars such as Daniel Bryan, Neville, Road Dogg and D-Lo Brown. Before that, he spent much of the late-Nineties playing Mel B in an all-male Spice Girls tribute act, and his life has been a never-ending quest to not have a real job.

York Press:

Lucy Pearman: cracking show in prospect

Now he is rolling with the punches on the comedy circuit as his debut tour hits York after the success of his podcast, Which Is The Best? So successful in fact that it has been translated into a live show, whose popularity has somewhat surprisingly spread to the Pacific island nation of Palau.

The show features Kyle and his tour support act, Sammy Dobson, from the BBC’s Boy Meets Girl and Ken Loach's film I, Daniel Blake. "As a 29 year-old woman, I shouldn't have the extensive Lego mini figure collection I have, or cry with delight at sea lions, but I do," says Dobson. "I also hang upside down naked because the internet told me to, but don't tell my Dad."

In a second Burning Duck gig this month, promoter Al Greaves will welcome Lucy Pearman to The Basement, City Screen, on January 22 to present her 2016 Edinburgh Fringe show Crack In Progress, wherein she performs dressed as a big egg. The show's description reads: “There’s an egg here to find other eggs and see if they're OK? For anyone aged 18-99 that ever had a little crack from Lucy Pearman."

Doors open at 7.45pm on Tuesday for Lee Kyle's show at the Black Swan, Peasholme Green, for which tickets cost £6 at wegottickets.com/BurningDuckComedy