Li Jin Hao

He stands at the mic speaking in a low, quiet whisper, looking like someone who wandered into the spotlight by accident. He sets up a premise about a walk in the woods or an office job, letting long pauses pool until the room drops its guard. Then he snaps it in half. It might be a sudden barked yell, a bizarre detour about washing backs for the yakuza, or a deadpan line about an aggressive spider. The punchlines arrive out of nowhere, but his expression never shifts. He just blinks, looking as confused by his own thoughts as the audience is.

Starting out in Scotland before finding an audience at the Edinburgh Fringe, he moved quickly from club basements to packed runs at London’s Soho Theatre. Other comics pay attention to him because he refuses to do easy crowd work, leaning instead on slow-burn surrealism and strict economy.

In his debut hour, Swimming in a Submarine, his sets operate like a sequence of trapdoors. At his best, the odd turns land with genuine surprise. The catch is that the trick requires total unawareness. Once the room figures out that the gentle delivery is just cover for an ambush, the device can start to feel a little too deliberate.

The naive persona on stage also works because of what it conceals. Raised in Singapore, he finished two years of mandatory military service before heading to St Andrews for university. When blunt memories of army drills slip into his daydream routines, the collision gives the silliness real teeth.