Daniel Kitson is the toast of the professional comic circuit and winner of a clutch of stand up gongs including Perrier and Time Out awards for his live performances.

He is an educated 25-year-old from a small town near Huddersfield who makes his living entertaining audiences everywhere from Accrington to Australia.

Which is strange. Because the scruffy performer doesn't like comedians. Or jokes for that matter. In fact you'd have to wait a long time to get a traditional gag.

Instead Kitson delivers a disarming rambling reverie, punctuated by extreme moments of bad language, that shuffles from philosophy to pornography and back again.

His world is very self-referential, self-conscious and he rails against a crowd that laughs at tired one-liners he holds up as examples of what isn't funny.

There's plenty of sharp observational humour instead, with improvisation and spur-of-the-moment diversions taken to new levels of brain-bending complexity.

Yes, he's got the cuddly persona of a badly-dressed geek, with lank receding hair, overgrown beard, beer-bottle glasses and sloppy skatewear clothes.

But this hides an acid wit and angry demeanour aimed at a non-plussed group of people who just want a few laughs and an enjoyable night out.

Kitson is probably the only person to take part in the York Comedy Festival who doesn't tell jokes. Does that make him a genius or a trickster?

Updated: 12:20 Friday, June 27, 2003