Review: Sean Lock: Lockipedia***

Sean Lock has become a familiar face on television panel shows over recent years, filling the role as the wryly sardonic man on the street.

On stage he's much more energetic than his small screen appearances would have you believe, which is perhaps just as well as there was no support act to warm the York audience up.

Lock is often described as underrated, still doing the usual rounds while the likes of Michael McIntyre have hit the arenas, but this latest show is definitely a tale of two halves.

Much of Lock's observational humour treads familiar territory, from the joys of shopping in Lidl, the problem of squashed raisins on car seats when you have children and why only chefs are allowed to swear on television. After an hour in which every last possible smirk is wrung out of each gag, it's hard not feel you've been there many times before.

However, the second half, is where Lock shines and where the title of the show is explained. Calling out seat numbers, he asks a member of the audience to shout out a topic from a joke and hopes there's material in his book of gags to suit.

He didn't have any one liners about Johnny Cash or the Ukraine, but it didn't matter, the device was really an excuse to prove his talent as a comic who can think on his feet.

Lock is underrated and if only the first half had been good as the second, he might have proved his doubters wrong.