Lee Mack review – latterday Eric Morecambe is…

Lee Mack review – latterday Eric Morecambe is gloriously daft

There’s a fine joke about Blackpool in Lee Mack’s new set, drawing on the town’s – shall we say – imperviousness to modernity. The same could be said of Mack’s standup. It’s the comedy that time forgot: gag-heavy tomfoolery marked by meticulous professionalism, with scarcely a wasted word nor slightest indication of what, in the real world, Mack thinks and feels. The jokes need to be good, then, and usually are – at least as dispatched by this latterday Eric Morecambe, whose every strut, gurn and squawk of ignominy is bent on maximising his ridiculousness and our delight.

It’s a short set. Mack is done in under 80 minutes; the evening’s beefed up by support act Mike Gunn, who’s even older-school than Mack. There’s an ’er-indoors air to both: Mack plays the familiar role of beleaguered husband and father, albeit one with a roving eye. Less Jack-the-lad, alas, more Mack-the-dad. One juvenile but irresistible running gag finds him trying to seduce a woman in the front row with magic. Elsewhere, his wife is described curating a collection of her children’s offcut hair and milk teeth. (Mack, in mock-terror: “She’s building another one!”)

There’s a glorious sense of attack here. Mack is always on the front foot, striding boldly into the next daft gag, apoplectic rant or dialogue with the crowd. (His ad libs are great, as he enjoys reminding us.)

At his best, he contrives a context to double up the funniness of any given gag, like when he bets a punter he’s got a joke on standby about her hometown. Cue several groansome gags about Nantucket and Vienna, which we laugh at on their own merit, and because Mack’s exasperated that they’re not where the woman comes from. Like a Blackpool holiday of yore, this is pleasure at its least complicated, and all the better for it.

• Until 25 October. Box office: 0844 249 4300. Then touring until 22 December. Venue: Apollo, London.