A CANADIAN funnyman is heading to west Dorset this weekend - bringing a show packed with killer gag after killer gag.

Stewart Francis will present Pun Gent at the Marine Theatre in Lyme Regis on Saturday (6) - and there's one talent that he will be relying on more than any other.

“Remembering them all and in the right order is the tricky part of my style of comedy,” he confesses.

“I approach it the way I do a script, so there are chunks that lead on to other bits while one joke will tell me that I’m at the end of a certain chunk.

"It’s the only way I can do it. But the beauty of being a one-liner guy is that while there’s a flow, I could still pop a joke in from the middle of nowhere that I might have forgotten to do earlier and it won’t be distracting: it’s just another one-liner.”

With a series of sell-out tours under his belt, one thing this UK-based Canadian knows is how to structure a live comedy show.

“This one was good to go at the end of last year, but I used the time in between to see if I could come up with a new gag that could bump out one of the ones that might not be quite so strong.

"But it’s nice to have an arsenal of gags; it’s comforting to know when the show is more or less ready and that I’m closing in on the magical hour."

While there might always be some ambiguity in a critic or audience member’s mind over where a joke is coming from and who the intended target might be, there’s one thing that Francis is crystal clear about.

“I’m living a charmed life. Coming over to the UK eight years ago was the real turning point professionally for me; I’d been coming over for years as a part-time player but being here permanently lifted me to the level that I always felt I was destined for.

"It wasn’t happening in Canada because there’s not really a star system there, so the talented people have to go further afield to ply their trade. But I haven’t plateaued yet, and hopefully I’ll be in control of that and decide when to head off into the sunset.”