Lee Mack, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham

It’s safe to say that comedian Lee Mack enjoyed the audience at the Concert Hall as much as they enjoyed him.

The stand-up and star of TV’s Not Going Out stayed a full 15 minutes longer than his billed timings last night – and for that we were grateful in what otherwise was a set that flew by.

From the outset he was gag-heavy. Rattling them out like a Ken Dodd for the 21^st Century (in the nicest possible comparison, of course), he was on his way into the next story, punch line or observation while the sell-out audience was still recovering from the last.

OK, he could be hit-and-miss sometimes, and a bit of a lull 40 minutes from the end showed he was at his best working the audience rather than relating those scripted tales of home life, children and his sex life.  

From telling us why elephants actually have a short memory to the vagaries of Irish name-spelling, he covered a vast range of topics from the point of view of the punters. Fair enough, his topics were mostly end-of-the-pier stuff – and some of the punch lines could probably be spotted from the spaceship that landed on that comet recently. He even managed to fluff a few lines so completely that we never got to hear the end of his stories. 

But he was very visual on stage, using the space well, pacing, pausing and reacting to the crowd.

His audience interaction was the key – and got by far the biggest laughs. Good old Grace from Kimberley, and a wonderful hair-stylist from Burton-on-Trent who made up her own line and probably got the biggest laugh of the night, laid the foundations for some good old-fashioned spontaneous fun.

His contact with the crowd was a mix of the traditional “What’s your name” and “What do you do” to remembering their names and what they’d told him to bring back into his gags further into the show.

Indeed, the encore was simply inviting questions from the floor. A risky strategy but the good folk of Queen of the Midlands delivered – and gave him the perfect material to round off a busy night.

Horrible Histories: Barmy Britain. Theatre Royal, Nottingham

Just how barmy is our Britain then?

Quite – if this whirlwind of a show is anything to be believed.

A whistle-stop tour through the ages, starting with Boudicca and the Romans and ending with the conclusion of the First World War showed us the facts.

But the facts were draped across music, comedy and sketches which never failed to hit the spot in a two-hour performance.

It’s hard to call it education theatre because although everyone will learn something from the show, it’s hardly tough learning - and perhaps the way forward for some of the drier history teachers out there to take on board.

If you’ve ever seen the television programme, you’ll be familiar with the Terrible Tudors, Vile Victorians and Rotten Romans – but it was all new to me.

It was the wide choice of historical tales by the Birmingham Stage Company that prompted me to reiterate to my nine-year-old that everything he was watching was true.

It all really happened. From Henry VIII’s execution of 72,000 people to the real meaning of the word ‘Viking’.

A striking and sobering thought for the adults watching was how much history can repeat itself. From the Crusades and King Richard the Lionheart ordering the massacre of 2,700 muslims at Acre to the threat of a worldwide plague in the middle ages. The parallels with the modern world were obvious to see. When there was last a Queen Elizabeth nearing the end of her reign, we had supposedly corrupt politicians and an economy struggling to make ends meet. There was even a parallel with the Scottish independence debates of today, with a reminder of how we sold our lands north of the border to help pay some mediaeval war debts.

There was more for the adults with a couple of real groaners of gags, including a particularly memorable Alex Salmond joke.

The gunpowder plot to blow up our politicians was acted out with Guy Fawkes talking about his plans via a Who Wants to be a Millionaire format – and we had Burke and Hare singing about their gruesome exploits to the tune of Postman Pat.

Horrible? Yes. History? Definitely!