This year's Perrier award winner failed to sell out the Corn Exchange and in New York still plays at clubs for $10 a night.

Perhaps this is because, in contrast to most of his contemporaries, his show is not big or brash enough to attract the hordes. They don't know what they're missing.

Tall and skinny, Martin is a genuine nerd who has spent most of his life engaged in completely unproductive and excessively time consuming activities.

Things such as constructing impressively detailed mathematical formulae for sorting out relationship problems and more outstanding still, a 224-word palindrome called Dammit, I'm Mad, the longest, non-computer generated sense-making palindrome in English.

Bewilderingly funny stuff, Martin presented the story of his life through an analysis of the word "if" which, though clever, was perhaps less engaging.

But what really marked this New Yorker out was his observational one-liners.

Perhaps the most memorable was his explanation for why he likes I Can't Believe It's Not Butter: "Sometimes, when I'm eating toast, I like to be incredulous."