BACK in April John Kearns sold out this venue with his unconventional, uncategorisable and decidedly weird, in a good way, brand of comedy – and here he was doing it all again.

The comic, still best known to many people for his TV appearances on Taskmaster last year and his role as assistant to Sarah Pascoe on Guessable, is continuing with his marathon The Varnishing Days tour which so far runs until next June.

To see two gigs on the same tour of many comics would be a chance to relive their greatest gags, but in the case of Kearns – all monk wig and ghoulish false teeth – every show is a meandering blank canvas, and it’s an interesting social experiment to gauge the variations There is, of course, some structure. Even oddballs need at least a basic plan to fill a 75-minute stream of consciousness.

And so, the big hitters were there – his TV appearances meaning sales were up but laughs down, the evisceration of the One Show’s Jermaine Jenas via an ageing tortoise, Marco Pierre-White boiling potatoes, his baby son swinging a wine bottle, Sunday Brunch and, of course, bin bags and Van Gogh.

However, there were many differences from the previous show in this freeform, observational and sometime self-analysing 70-odd minutes.

Indeed, he tipped an imaginary hat to this Echo writer’s previous ‘good’ review, but said he wasn’t feeling it in the room at the time. Tonight, he maintained, was different, and given his own constant laughter, he seemed to be enjoying it.

Audience participation (or persecution, depending on your viewpoint, it’s a schoolboy error to sit near the front) remains key, with a running gag about a deep-voiced 19-year-old sounding like a robot and a father-to-be who couldn’t remember a single film he’d seen.

It’s all done with kindness, it must be said.

Kearns, rather like Stewart Lee, has this ability to dissect what he is doing to the nth degree, wondering whether he should, as advised by pals, ditch the wig and teeth and go more mainstream. That would almost certainly be successful, but the intimacy of shows would lose its edge. He couldn’t do this at Wembley Arena, for instance.

The rambling performance took in Paul McCartney, Spot the Dog, Fray Bentos, Paco Rabanne, John Bercow, Tracey Emin, The Snowman, Titanic and circus trapeze artistes – and much more.

Keep up the good work old son.

Support came from Pat Cahill, an alumnus of the University of East Anglia along with Kearns (as well as radio DJ Greg James), a cadaverous looking chap whose use of a coat hanger as a microphone holder ranks him alongside John Otway as one of our great eccentrics.

His best routines were musical – the singalong Captain Coconut and the ancient ‘East Anglian folk songs’ such as Weekly Shop and Wall’s Too High. He also riffed on performing CPR on a sleeping drunk in a doorway, old people crying wolf and having a son made of dough. It was that sort of evening.