There were no press invites for this low-key work-in-progress but desperate times mean desperate measures.

Don a false beard and buy the last remaining ticket to see this Hollywood bigshot who is about to appear on Sesame Street and usually plays venues where the bar is bigger than this theatre.
Gervais, in mandatory jeans and black top, quickly made it clear that this was a try-out for a future, still unannounced tour on the subject of science.

“They won’t all be zingers,” he explained, though it did mean we might get some exclusives. The gags that flew would survive, the gags that died would be given quiet burials.

In the event there were very few casualties. Gervais has the kind of confident, anecdotal pub‑chatterbox style that means he can turn any minor incident into a major vignette, whether it is going to a Ken Dodd gig, receiving a goat-for-Africa for Christmas or being besieged by troglodyte autograph hunters outside Capital Radio (“none of them were symmetrical”).
The most persuasive routine was his dismantling of Noah’s Ark.

He is hardly the first atheist to get sidesplitting material from bible-bashing but he may be the first to do it using a children’s book won at Sunday School aged four for good attendance.

There were also some tart reflections on famous quotations. And, as ever, he demonstrated his gift for physical clowning, jutting out his arms to impersonate a spider.

Only a few caveats. One joke about Alzheimers and sex — already in his act before the latest Ross furore — felt crow‑barred in for shock effect, though later he did make some serious points about the lunacy of the current PC-gone-mad mood.
And while Gervais is clearly not homophobic there were too many childish jibes at gayness.

Oh, and not much here was really about science but at £9 a ticket nobody was complaining.

www.rickygervais.com