It is probably no coincidence that Jimmy Carr's stage set resembles an office. There is a desk, a chair and paperwork to be dealt with during a routine on spoof job applications.

Of all today's comedians, the ex-marketing man is the most instinctively businesslike and his latest show, Gag Reflex, is a scarily efficient display of jokesmithery.

While it is wrong to say that Carr is mellowing there are welcome glimmers of loosening up. Previous gigs found him stock still, rattling through a clipboard's worth of funnies as if ticking off daily chores.

That clinical coldness has now been partially replaced by audience banter worthy of Al Murray's Pub Landlord.

The trademark un-PC jokes still dominate. Imagine the missing link between Bob Hope and Jim Davidson.

Japes include one-liners about terminal disease, digs at the French and a story about minicab rapists doing the rounds of the comedy circuit.

Some riffs, such as the squirm-inducingly unsavoury Heather Mills McCartney jibes, are obvious, but many ingeniously squeeze out laughs by reworking everyday language. Who is responsible for drugs in school? Supply teachers.

Best of all is the sharpsuited stand-up's Agony Aunt section, when. perched on a Chesterfield, he offers to solve audience problems. The crowd was candid, but he had snappy comebacks for everything.Probably not a gig to attend with your mother.

• Carling Apollo, 10 Dec (0870 606 3400).