I don't get Lee Evans. I wish I did because he's a popular man. The first night of his Brighton show was packed to the gills.

The women behind me were in hysterics and, all around, the audience roared with laughter.

I'm glad people like him, though, because Lee Evans tries really hard. From the minute he funny-walks on to the stage, he doesn't stop.

Every one of the many, many jokes he tells is animated by cartoon twitches and contortions fired by an incredible, manic, nervous energy.

He runs with rivers of sweat, which he periodically wipes off with a towel. Anyone who perspires that much has to be admired, if only for that.

That isn't to say Lee Evans isn't very good. Clearly a pro, he knows how to work his audience and those twitches and contortions are well timed.

I even admit they raised a smile once or twice on my otherwise cheerless face. It's just there were so many of them, it got wearing. I wasn't laughing at the jokes, either.

Evans churned out obvious and humdrum anecdotes about gas showrooms, seagulls and the toilets on aeroplanes with punchlines that could be spotted a mile off.

Not that these weren't funny starting points but his job as a comedian is to take things further, which he didn't.

His reliance on badly-observed toilet humour also became tiring.

"Women don't fart, do they?" said Evans.

If this was supposed to be a joke between him and the boys, it ignored the fact half of his audience were women.

Not that this was insulting to women, it just relegated his humour to a time when mother-in-law jokes were the fashion and made Lee seem stupid.

Perhaps it's time for him to find out that all women fart, including his wife.

Though, of course, he must know this already but just thinks it's funnier to pretend he doesn't. It isn't.

Nor is it funny to constantly sling the "f" word around like a teenage boy who has just discovered what it means. "Stop swearing!" I wanted to say. "Stop!"

Or perhaps what I wanted to say was just: "Stop altogether."

Review by Louise Ramsay, features@theargus.co.uk