Before Thursday night I’d never sat alone in a cloakroom, let alone with 30 other people. However, after arriving at the Melbourne Town Hall and being ushered through to a small (‘Intimate’ is the promo term, I think.) room with a hodgepodge of plastic chairs and haphazardly hung black curtains, I was living the dream.

Now, I must admit I didn’t know an awful lot about Dean before I entered the closet he currently occupies, but I did know that he was an American ex-patriot, a detail which I immediately understood and supported. This is, in fact, where most of his material stems from, and for the hour that he was on stage the audience was delighted to find his hometown derided and his new home lightly roasted. It is a smart move on any comedian’s behalf to fill a show with compliments towards Australian institutions such as AFL (which are his young son’s initials), state rivalry, beer and cricket. The cheers every time Dean mentioned sport or booze were testament to both the hilarity of his observations and the hard-working bar staff next door.

From the moment Dean stepped onto the small stage, I was lost in the accent, the ease with which he delivered, and the playful fun poked at the differences between American and Australian culture. The fact that I really felt like a beer after the show was a happy reminder of the evening spent in the closet.