Mark Watson: I'm Not Here

Mark Watson definitely is here: on arrival, he stands in the auditorium genially welcoming his audience. It's a typically confident, engaging gesture from a man with a decade-plus experience in his craft. Where he rambles, there is impeccable structure. Where he is briefly distracted, there is a perfectly timed comic tangent. He's cleverer than most, too. Rather than the usual introductory banter, asking audience members about their lives, he has instead researched them on Twitter in advance. This, he notes, is “more time-efficient”.

The show's title refers to crises of identity, including his own fear of being—or not being—recognised in public, or more often mistaken for anyone from David Baddiel and Rhod Gilbert to Sue Perkins sans glasses. The narrative follows a story about his passport being found invalid on a flight to Australia and his constant battles to be approved by layers of immigration officers. It's a rich vein to mine his own neuroses, with engaging diversions into his family life and views on modernity.

He preps the audience in advance that two thirds of the way through the show he'll go offstage and return, rock star-like, for his encore – the denouement. It's a fun moment, with confetti cannons handed out to the front row and someone piggy-backing him through the crowd. But when he returns, the end of the story turns out to be rather limp. Where he should be storming the hit singles, his finale peters out with a few more anecdotes, offering little emotional or comedic pay-off.