Jerry Sadowitz has just broken one of the cardinal rules of the Magic Circle. He’s done the same card trick twice in a row. He shouldn’t do that. “But I’m f***ing good,” he beams, “so I can.”

Well, fair enough. Sadowitz is very f***ing good indeed. Though he may say f*** every other f***ing word, spewing bile towards everyone from Chris Langham to Kate Moss to the major religions, Sadowitz is pure showbusiness.

He’s wilfully offensive too, of course. But, unlike some other controversy merchants, Sadowitz is at heart a light entertainer. His hateful rage shares the bill with his postvariety polish. He’s a world-class close-up magician and a world-class splenetic Glaswegian. Spitting his words out from under his top hat and curls, he debases himself first and foremost – “I’m not bitter,” he spits bitterly, “and that’s so important” – before debasing the rest of us.

If his tricks do bore you, then you are probably incapable of being entertained by card magic. If his jokes offend you, well, fair enough. He is a deeply wrong individual. But that’s the point. Portraying himself as a perverted homunculus at the service of his base desires, he’s a Mr Saturday Night from a dark dimension. He offers us abandon by proxy. The fact that his act is close, but not identical, to the real man gives it its unique charge.

That also means that some of his audience isn’t much interested in irony, who might cheer a spot of gay-bashing, Jew-bashing – Sadowitz is Jewish himself – or McCann-bashing as if it were a sensible opinion, bravely expressed.

There’s more going on here than that. But Sadowitz won’t weigh down his act by explaining himself.

The tricks, which longtime fans will have seen before, give structure to the comedy. So Sadowitz never goes too far off the rails for too long. Which is this fine show’s virtue – and its limitation.

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