Micky Flanagan – review

You may have seen Micky Flanagan on telly a lot recently; "I've been canin' it," he says. And why not – now 51, he spent years in standup's foothills before super-stardom struck. There's no secret to his success: he's likable and traditional, has an instantly identifiable tone of voice, and wants nothing more than for us all to have a good time. Provided you're not outright hostile to 1970s nostalgia and 'er-indoors comedy, you will do.

That's Flanagan's territory, more uncomplicatedly so than on his last tour, when he took pains to subvert the first impression of a straight-down-the-line Cockney geezer. Tonight, he's here to tell us how luxury-free life was back when he was knee-high to a Billingsgate fish porter: when mum's idea of discipline was a threat to stab him, and little Micky had to shepherd drunk dad back from the pub. And he's here to talk girls' nights in and boys' night out, the wife's love of central heating, and his surpassing glee when granted a day at home alone.

All of that is old-school, but most of it rings true, and Flanagan animates it with choice details – like the parrots flying around in his tropical-temperature front room. The better riffs veer off that familiar territory. Flanagan role-playing himself after a stroke, incoherently protesting as his wife drains his bank account, is daftly tragi-comic. And the impudence of his anecdote about 9/11 extricating him from a lovers' tiff is irresistible.

There's lesser stuff: the tea-bagging routine is cheap; there's off-the-peg material about self-checkouts in supermarkets and dogs' mastery over their owners. But with his cheeky-chappie strut and conspiratorial grins, Flanagan keeps it all perky. Anxiety is entirely absent, and in its place there's a cheerful ease with being a semi-reconstructed, wanking, cowardly, affectionate, middle-aged male that, more often than not, is fun to submit to.