Ahir Shah took command of the stage in his Jericho Tavern “Duffer” show on Tuesday night. Through childhood stories, we soon learn that the show is eponymous: ‘duffer’ comes from the Hindi word for clown, which his grandmother would call him when chasing him around the house as a toddler.

Family is a major theme that runs through the hour, and it branches out into anecdotes covering immigration, life and death, and religion. Shah’s time on stage is more than a routine standup set. He seamlessly transitions between animated comic and serious storyteller: in one moment, he is loud, wide-eyed, and gesticulating while building up to a punch line, and a few minutes later he segues into a solemn account of his grandmother’s dementia. Shah approaches the more heartfelt moments of his show with the poise, cadence, and imagery of a spoken word poet, describing the aftermath of a loved one’s memory loss as the “shell they inhabited.”

Shah’s stories feature topics that audiences across his tour can connect to, like family, though he also skilfully adjusted the show to the Oxford crowd. He extemporaneously picked on a first year student studying PPE at the beginning, and kept referring to his youth, for example, by making fun of how he might not have heard of landlines. I also appreciated Shah’s scholarly references, like when he compared the wide pool found on Tinder to Dunbar’s number, which suggests that our brain can handle a maximum of 150 social connections.

Shah’s references to a song from his youth formed a backbone to “Duffer.” His use of this motif at various points throughout the show were especially daft, catching us off-guard by smoothly weaving lyrics into his jokes. This kind of comic creativity typified the hour and marks Shah as a comedian of unique talent.

This was the most erudite, poignant, and entertaining hour of standup that I have seen in a long time. Shah will be performing in London for the rest of the month, and then touring the UK into 2019.