Bouncing on stage with his usual gangling excitability, Phil Ellis might just be one of the most perfectly crafted bundles of contradictions in comedy. He’s down at heel but unfailingly optimistic, tempers a vulnerable streak with a knowing sense of bitterness, and executes his gags with a punky DIY flair while feeling as slick as a well-oiled machine. But most of all, he’s funny, provoking waves of convulsive laughter in his barrage of decidedly silly creativity.

Flanked by hype man Tom Short, who bolsters his jokes with non-sequitur comments and sound effects, Come On And Take The Rest Of Me finds Ellis stitching together his absurdist sketches with stand-up that is at once relatable and almost entirely breathing its own air. From the price tag hanging off his suit to the sudden left turns of his every punchline, there’s no joke that he doesn’t commit to with meticulous, unrelenting displays of comic prodigiousness. There’s singing, there’s dancing and there’s a brief satire of the Fringe’s ‘trauma comedy’ obsession, all underlined by Ellis’ frantic glee and makeshift ingenuity. 

His previous shows have featured plenty of creative mistruths about his biography (he claimed to have two estranged children in his 2019 hour and to have been adopted in a show from 2013: two brilliantly executed fabrications), but here his comic persona is living in an increasingly heightened version of reality, revelling in absurdism and audience disruptions with a gregarious sense of mischief. With visual wit, relentless wordplay and constant surprises, there’s barely a fallow second here. 

Phil Ellis: Come On And Take The Rest Of Me, Monkey Barrel, until 25 August, 12.45pm.