There’s a moment when Mulaney first walks on stage that is slightly disarming - a sense that this is somewhat not as slick as it might have been before. Maybe that’s a function of an earlier conversation with Alasdair about how for American comedians, the tour is not the artefact, the special is, so maybe there’s more of a WIP feel to it; maybe it’s the ruffled shirt and rolled up sleeves, a sharp contrast to the sharp suits of before; maybe it’s that, bafflingly, John Mulaney is performing at the Bristol Beacon. I still can’t quite conceive it. It’s a lot of fun, some good local material up front (“I love the Bristol accent. No notes for five thousand years”) and the show itself is looser, if still classic Mulaney. A long routine about his custom party bags and his insistence that he’s not updating his references for the UK are perfect. The personal stuff about his Vietnamese family is a masterclass in tightrope walking. The turns of phrase (unfair to quote here in the spirit of the no phones policy) are immaculate. We are dweebs and go wait by stage door, where he is a consumate professional in how genuinely happy he is to meet us but how smoothly he moves people along once their time is done. He is thrilled that I think The Sack Lunch Bunch is the best thing he’s done, and he takes an actually lovely selfie of the three of us. He is tired enough to accidentally sign my vinyl addressed to himself, and I find that very funny. The supports - Mandal and Andrea Jin - are both very American in their own ways, but I enjoy both of them more than the supports the last time I saw Mulaney in London.