Josh Widdicombe, York Barbican

TV comic Josh Widdicombe knows how to butter up an audience. "York, you're the best crowd of the tour" he told a sold-out Barbican last night - before revealing it was his first night of the Bit Much... roadshow.

It was a return gig for the 36-year-old, who'd played the Barbican in 2016 with the same warm-up act, the Eton-educated Ivo Graham, who did a super job with his brand of gently apologetic humour (who knew interdental brushes could be so amusing?).

Widdicombe has a non-offensive schoolboy charm, which you can't help but warm to. His topics reveal as much about the audience as himself: organic veg boxes, stag dos and wedding lists, baby monitors and making pasta pesto. He was heckled as he mused over what to do with the remains of the jar once he'd had one of its six portions, and after a couple of lame put-down attempts, earned a round of applause with the final attack: "I don't think you realise how much the room hates you".

But there was no real venom in the bite. Likewise, when he riffed about the pains of new fatherhood, you knew in your heart he was not really hating it. "I used to worry about my mortality - now I'd quite happily be dead," he declared after a tale about the latest baby monitors which come with images as well as sound and were freaking him out.

His humour is observational and works best when it rings true with the crowd, which it did throughout the generous two-hour gig.

Maxine Gordon