At a time when a good stand-up comic like Milton Jones can't fill the OFS Studio, and Nick Revell does not sell out the Cellar, it's heartening that Dave Spikey can get a big theatre about 60 per cent full on a Sunday. His audience ranged in age from the very young to the late middle-aged, confirming his broad appeal. Possibly this is due to his high television profile. In recent years he's supported Peter Kay in Phoenix Nights and Johnny Vegas in a newspaper comedy drama. He's also been on the cult panel game, Eight Out of Ten Cats. But he has not become too 'showbiz'.

After all, he has taken another route from most modern stand-ups. Spikey was a hospital scientist over 20 years, moonlighting as a comic at folk clubs, this being the sort of background from which the slightly older Jasper Carrot, Mike Harding and Max Boyce emerged years before.

This back story comes in useful for Spikey. It's his second riff after comparing the Oxford Mail to his local Lancashire paper. From the former, he notes the story of the lead singer of the back-up band who had his coat stolen at the Beatles' only Oxford gig. What did he expect when he was with four scousers? Spikey is not kind to some of his former NHS colleagues. One nurse kept on typing the word 'placenta' on her computer when told to 'press enter'. Nor was he keen on government produced paperwork.

Adopting an attitude of what some would call sturdy common sense, and others a lack of sensitivity, Spikey weaves in tall stories and gets in set-piece jokes when relating his own experiences or making observations connected to them. In two hours, without a break, he keeps the laughter level consistently high. With a sort of stacking system of ideas in his head, he is able to return to them, making the whole gig more than the sum of its parts. Some of the amusement became a little uncertain towards the end, when he seemed to be rather stuck on genitalia and his last mocking comments on rock lyrics, which he plays, are not perhaps his strongest. By combining elements of traditional and modern humour and by keeping his feet firmly on his targets, Spikey shows that he has not lost his raw edge.