JACK Dee's satellite navigation system in his car was awry, sending him to Tang Hall.

At least his comic radar was still working yesterday, his antennae spotting kitchen appliances in every front garden and children playing Frisbee ... with roof tiles.

On his first tour for more than three years - he last played York in December, 2001 - Dee instantly had the sell-out audience onside with digs at Selby and Hull: traditional first shots that were followed by below-the-belt blows aimed at Michael Jackson.

Stereotyped as the curmudgeon of British comedy, dour and sour, deadpan and dapper in his suit, Dee is now a father of four, and there is suddenly something of the child about his comedy. Where once he was a grumpy old man before his time, and he can still wither anything to the size of a prune, now he is more playful, more of a naughty schoolboy - Jack the lad, as it were - to counter the gripes of wrath.

Like his baggier suit, he has loosened up, become more self-deprecating, not least in his readiness to read out abusive text messages from the audience as his encore material.

Dentists, chemists and tourists, park-and-ride and iPods all get nailed, and Dee's mimicry of drunken behaviour is a sublime high point. The Evening Press is flicked through with brisk scepticism for humorous snippets and bizarre adverts; improvisation that he tops when the spotlight starts playing up. How apt, because darkness and light shape Jack Dee in 2005.

Updated: 12:14 Monday, April 11, 2005