On the way to a gig in Skipton, North Yorkshire, comedian Mark Steel noticed a road sign for a town called Keighley. Later in the show, he asked the audience if the town was Skipton’s rival. The room went chillingly quiet and then one woman, with calm menace, called out: “Keighley is a sink of evil.“ “You can just hear it can’t you?“ laughs Mark. “I loved the way they all spoke as one. Another woman called out, ‘Mark, we don’t like your jacket!’ and they all cracked up. ‘We’ – like they’d all had a discussion about it and everyone agreed. They were great. It made me think ‘I bet I could do a whole show just on Skipton’.“ And so the idea for Mark Steel’s in Town was born, his award-winning Radio 4 programme, now on its fifth series, which he also tours across the UK. Mark tailors his material to each town and city he plays in, shedding light on each one’s quirkiness and interesting aspects.

Next week the 53-year-old brings his show to the Leicester Square Theatre, with high hopes that he will leave his audience in stitches as he spends the evening ridiculing the quirks and foibles of the area.

He says: “The idea is that I go to a town and try to make everybody laugh uproariously while I’m being thoroughly rude about it.

“I haven’t had any flack yet. I always think I’m going to.

“If you just come into a place and start being rude about it then people will get annoyed but if you do enough research about the place people let you get away with anything really.“ So what inspired the creation of the show?

“Well everywhere is just so brilliantly unique. Everywhere looks the same on the surface now with multi-storey car parks and that but underneath people have a good sense of what they are.

“It’s just fun to be funny about somewhere.“ l Mark Steel’s In Town is at Leicester Square Theatre, Leicester Place, WC2, on Thursday, January 30 and January 31.

Details: 0844 873 3433, leicestersquaretheatre.com