What next, Stephen Hawking at Jongleurs? Surprise guest Ricky Gervais got a warm welcome but writer Richard Dawkins was the real star.

Gervais did, however, get more laughs than Dawkins with a try-out for his next tour, entitled Science. It would be fair to say that his first-draft funnies were not the high points.

A deconstruction of the charity gift of a goat to Africans (“oh no, not another mouth to feed”) worked but his crude dinner party gag would have shamed Frankie Boyle’s set.

There was a sprinkling of giggles in Dawkins’s skewering of religion, comparing it to a drug with traffikers everywhere. Elsewhere Richard Herring sagely likened Pringles to communion wafers, while Stewart Lee wondered if the Pope’s face could appear on a lollipop. Josie Long and Natalie Haynes showed that women can be entertainingly dweeby, too.

Gold stars to Robin Ince for hosting this laughed-up version of the Royal Institute Lecture. He is clearly king of the nerds, although he probably knew that already, given that he revealed his groupies ask him for reading lists.

Tonight (020 7388 8822, www.thebloomsbury.com), 21 December, Hammersmith Apollo (0844 844 4748, www.ticketzone.co.uk).