Dramatic irony

Another reason why Trev should have gone on the stage instead of becoming a builder, apart from his love of the limelight, is the wonderful expressiveness of his face. Now, merely by giving me a level stare and bulging his eyes at me, he’s conveying that he is about to lose his struggle to keep the lid on his mirth. That he, Trev, should be suppressing an emotion merely out of politeness, and then confiding this, to me, via a subtle facial gesture, like some fastidious bourgeois, is in itself an example of this street-fighting farm boy’s highly developed sense of dramatic irony.

What’s amusing him is the scene being enacted at the next stout pub table, where a chap is trying to have a ‘heart to heart’ with Sharon. That someone should be under the impression that Sharon has a heart, and to then attempt to negotiate with it, is, I agree, amusing.