“What’s a ventriloquist?” asked one of my sons when I arrived home, bright-eyed and ecstatic, after watching Jay Johnson. Which gives you some idea of the challenge that the homely American entertainer faces in convincing sceptics that a string of anecdotes about his profession makes a lively night at the theatre.

Ventriloquism has been pushed to the margins in the age of CGI and computer games. Yet as Johnson begins telling his stories, delving back to the first stirrings of his dark art among the Ancients, you realise that you have stumbled across one of those wonderful but neglected corners of life where art meets anthropology.

As Johnson explains in his breezy way, for much of its history ventriloquism enjoyed a dubious reputation as a manifestation of satanic power. (After all, the Devil used a serpent to hoodwink Adam and Eve.) At one point, strolling on a stage crammed with suitcases, boxes and trunks, he has fun communicating with the severed head of a criminal.

It’s quite possible to imagine a show delving much deeper into the murkier aspect of the story, tapping into the same ghoulish instincts as that grinning anatomist-cum-showman Gunther von Hagens. Johnson, however, has a much sunnier, Middle American persona, and most of his props – including a boa constrictor, a testosterone-charged monkey and a simple face drawn on a board – are unthreatening, but extremely funny nonetheless.

As he explains how his childhood obsession led to a stage career and an oddball role in the TV sitcom Soap, he goes long stretches without relying on any foil at all. It is a remarkable performance, full of deft punchlines, which even overcomes a slightly mawkish conclusion. Johnson’s seemingly effortless technique draws out our atavistic desire to see inanimate objects acquire a human spirit. You see, we are not really so advanced as we like to think.

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