Book for a Pete Firman show and you know you’re bound to have an evening of both laughter and total perplexity. His latest show, that was due to appear at the Royal and Derngate a few months ago but was postponed due to the dreaded RAAC, is two hours of Pete, alone on stage apart from when he is joined on stage by his victims, I mean, members of the audience who have volunteered to assist him, and it’s as joyful an experience as ever.

In some respects, he’s an unlikely looking showman, walking on stage without a lot of fuss, sporting a stripy T-shirt like it’s Dress Down Friday, a mass of unruly hair like an overgrown kid from The Romper Room. He has a touch of the modern day Eric Morecambe to him, and instantly garners a terrific rapport with the audience, whom he gamely insults, but we let him get away with it because he’s clearly such a nice guy.

I’ve lost count of the times when I have said to myself, I’m not going to take my eyes off his hands so that I can work out how he gets that signed card/£20 note into the zipped up part of his wallet, and once again I let myself down. In TrikTok (I see what he did there), Mr F has assembled a good dozen or so pretty much brand new tricks to astound us, ranging from the deceptively simple handkerchief that changes colour to the swinging helicopter of peril – the peril being that if in you’re in the first few rows you might get splashed with cola.

But some of his tricks truly defy everything we understand to be basic truths of life. For me the most gob-smacking moment was his moving pattern of solid wooden blocks that shatters the laws of geometry. I won’t say anymore so as not to ruin it for you – but how on Earth does he do it? It was also fun to be involved in one of his tricks, as one of three audience members who had to select a card from a pack that had been thrust to us from the stage in a bucket. Naturally, by the power of mental transference, he guessed which card I had picked. (Note – it wasn’t mental transference, it was a trick, and I have a tiny inkling of how he did it, but again I’ll say no more.)

Trick after trick entrances us, and the evening flies by. The tour has been so successful that extra gigs have been lined up during the summer, so if you haven’t had a chance to catch this show, you still can in Maidstone, Beccles, Andover, Middlesbrough, Barnard Castle, Chipping Norton and Darlington. A great night out – and you’ll go home buzzing with confusion!