RICKY Gervais starts where we know him best, on screen.

In this case, in his first comic concert since drawing the final curtain on The Office, he is on a video screen, standing outside Parliament, telling us "Politics is everywhere" and then challenging a taboo by making the disabled the crutch for humour.

As with humourless, self-important middle-manager David Brent, in this opening "film short" he plays a character numb to all but his own feelings. Once more, the screen is his natural medium.

Once on stage, taller than you expect, goatee beard gone, hair slicked back, in buttoned-up charcoal suit and black V-neck top, he is being himself.

Alone on stage, he has his political agenda and a lectern (a convenient aide de memoir for keeping track of his subject matter). The nasal Estuary English accent and disbelieving tone is still there, but the mask of Brent has gone.

"I have decided to live and die by the politics I hold dearly, like Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Ben Elton," he says. Elton is a soft target, but it is his 'Eighties form of political correctness and right-on leftie social concern that Politics is mocking.

Gervais's theme is to challenge such correctness with frank incorrectness, daring the audience to laugh with him at gay sex leaflets, disabilities and pop stars doing their bit for charity.

Through revealing his own unsettled and unsettling belief system, he attacks hypocrisy and the role of fashion in humour as much as in life.

In this age of comedy as shock 'n' roll, Gervais teases at the edges of prejudice and at the conservative, Grumpy Old Men streak of the Brits, best captured in his assessment that Nelson Mandela has not re-offended since being released, so the prison system must work.

Gervais has said he wants people to like his work, not him. Put another way, this means don't shoot the messenger, but read the message.

Politics addresses life's awkward silences and dilemmas: what is and isn't funny, whether we should laugh or not, and an hour is about as far as the message needs to run.

Gervais took up stand-up only after he was "a bit famous", his last live show, Animals, was in 2002, and it shows. He is not at ease with this domain in the manner of a Ross Noble, Peter Kay or Ken Dodd, nor does he spark belly laughs or show an inclination for off-the-cuff remarks.

What he does do is throw you off balance - so much so that no one heckles him - while reaffirming the British gift for irony and self-deprecation. Ironically, I ended up liking the warts-and-all man, but slightly disappointed by the work.

Also tonight, April 12, 7.30pm, sold out

Updated: 09:42 Monday, April 12, 2004