JEREMY Hardy, English cultural commentator, Radio 4 wit and 21 years a stand-up, surveys his scene, a full Pocklington Arts Centre, on his first visit there.

"Pocklington? Does this place only appear every 220 years? It's just a part of York kept for spares, isn't it?" he prods. We laugh. The tone is so deadpan, the voice so quietly conspiratorial, that he has you on his side from kick-off (even more so when he observes that the button-up cardigans he has now discarded for zip-up tops would today make him look like Rigsby in Rising Damp) .

The start is typically foggy, not because he hasn't played a gig for a while (and won't do another one for almost three weeks) but because his comic style has always been to throw in the jabs before landing the upper cut. That initial mention of York leads him off into anti-Semitism, Judaism, Islam, the BNP, 9/11 conspiracy theories, and onwards to Bush looking confused, Blair terrified, as they lead the rise in right-wing Christianity.

Global politics and religion are strong suits, matched by his dissection of grey Britain, its class system, myopia, cold-calling culture and unwelcoming demeanour.

Add in his gift for mimicry and he can make a fool of anyone, from fox hunters to Kilroy, Joss Stone to the botox brigade.

The BNP would pin him down as a right-on leftie; in reality, he hits you right, he hits you left, he hits you dead centre with uncommon sense.

Updated: 11:06 Thursday, February 17, 2005