Ricky Gervais at New Theatre, Oxford review: has Ricky become the Donald Trump of stand-up?

Is Ricky Gervais the Donald Trump of stand-up? Whatever he says doesn’t get him cancelled, it makes him more popular.

As he quips at the start of Mortality, his last two Netflix specials prompted complaints, which shot him to the top of the streaming charts. The same will presumably happen with this uneven, crude, sarcastic set.

If you don’t like references to rape, bottoms and paedophilia this is not the show for you. Those subjects crop up frequently, as do mentions of living in Hampstead. The phone signal is terrible there, apparently, because the residents keep objecting to pylons being erected. Put it in the garden of a blind person is his blunt solution.

There is, he suggests, a point to this sort of outrageous content. It is not just about making anti-woke jokes in the name of free speech. There are bad taste jokes about Ghandi, Sharia law and dead children. He is particularly proud of a gag about Jimmy Savile, adding, like a naughty schoolboy, that it might not be making it into the Netflix edit.

He does make a smart semantic point about the distinction between “saying” a taboo word and “using” a taboo word. When he utters a taboo word he can contextually justify it because he is saying it, not using it. But this is a rare moment of mature reflection. Much of the material feels like a tick list of social media tropes, mocking everything from ADHD to virtue signalling.

Maybe this will have evolved by the time it reaches arenas later on tour, but there were sections here which could have benefited from some topical tweaking. A routine about euthanasia, for example, which at least touched on the title of the show, would have hit harder if it had referenced the current debate over the assisted dying bill.

As an atheist he doesn’t think there is anything after death. I did enjoy his pungently course image – more hardcore Carry On than Bosch – of what hell might resemble if it existed.

Proceedings concluded with some contrasting personal stories, one about working as a labourer during his gap year which had a ho-hum punchline, and a couple about hosting the Golden Globes, which ended with him dissecting a filthy football terrace song from the Eighties. The Office, which he famously co-wrote with Stephen Merchant, used to make me cringe and laugh. This just made me cringe.

Mortality features both the best and the worst of Ricky Gervais. I'm way too gig-hardened to be offended but I was upset by the inconsistency.

There is clearly a huge audience that enjoys his humour when it is as dark as his trademark black T-shirt, but for me it is starting to feel as if it has run its course. He still has his moments, but I’m not sure if he gets my vote this time round.

Touring. Tickets and Information here, livenation.co.uk