Joe Kent-Walters’ anarchic alter-ego Frankie Monroe has dug one hell of a hole for himself. After being jettisoned from a working men’s club in his native Rotherham and dragged by the ghoulies to the infernal pit for crimes against cabaret, you’d be forgiven for thinking that eating brimstone for breakfast might start to piss on his chips. Not a bit of it. Frankie revels in purgatory until an arch Lancastrian nemesis unleashes a plan so despicable it threatens to undo everything he’s worked for.

Kent-Walters damn near chucks the entirety of the variety genre at his audience. Using animation, songs, puppetry and the kind of throwback Northern humour Jim Bowen would have bent his own bully to be a part of, his take on character comedy is so relentlessly daft, it doesn’t so much tease out the laughs as wrestle you into compliance. If this sounds a lot, it is; yet nothing feels superfluous. Wielding hilarious crowd participation (fully bog-washed in irony), he constructs a ridiculous world where meat-based miscreants roam freely and a man can forfeit his phone betting on asparagus, yet it all makes complete sense.

He even crams in a recognisable tonal shift, when the scurrilous Vegas Dave (also Kent-Walters) enters halfway through, lampooning hipster bars and inventing a crowd chant for the ages. Writing a follow-up to last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer-winning hour might have spooked some, but not Kent-Walters; this show’s creativity would give you the shivers. Who knew eternal damnation could be this much fun? 

Joe Kent-Walters Is Frankie Monroe: Dead!!! (Good Fun Time), Monkey Barrel Cabaret Voltaire, until 24 August, 9.30pm; Monkey Barrel, 11 August, 2.50pm.