Deadpan and “mildly depressed” Yorkshire lad Liam Williams doesn’t seem the type to revel in adulation, but really fella, take a bow.

With the TV jam-packed with comedy panel shows featuring a parade of brash, breezy and increasingly banal “bright young things”, Williams is the perfect antidote.

This routine, “Just called Liam Williams because I couldn’t think of any witty puns on my name,” earned him a best newcomer nomination at last year’s Edinburgh Festival. And it was immediately obvious why; he does dour and detached as well as Jack Dee and offbeat perception as precise as Stewart Lee – but what really set him apart was his lucid and at times lyrical language.

His poetic prose – perfectly contrasted by his knowing, flat-vowelled delivery – seamlessly flowed through the set as he mused on his “lazy” life as a “semi-professional comedian” and his “lower middle-class upbringing”.

Crucially, despite his linguistic panache, it never strayed into clever dick territory; for every mention of Plath there was a nod to Nuts magazine, for every angst-fuelled reading from his unpublished novel (a Catcher In The Rye parody) there was a withering run through Time Out’s top ten weirdest date locations.

“My inner monologue is a cross between Philip Larkin and Hard-Fi,” he grumbled.

If it results in stand-up as sharp and as special as this, long may it continue.