The anticipation is palpable. Here, in this small room seating fewer than 200 people, Frank Skinner is making his return to stand-up after ten years on the telly. He could have played a way bigger venue – indeed, come his autumn tour, he’ll be doing exactly that all over the country. Can the brilliant Brummie reclaim his reputation as one of the best live comics of his generation?

Well, he’s got some work to do. For the first 40 minutes of his set he’s like his own warm-up man, playing off the crowd and local peculiarities in a skilful, affable way that nonetheless feels like a dereliction of duty in a one-hour show.

His real theme is turning 50 – “I don’t want f***ing applause!” he chides, his new gold molar temporarily dazzling us – but whatever he might have to say on the subject, he’s eking it out.

Skinner is still illuminatingly seedy. Masturbation – something he says he’s supposed to be too old to do, let alone discuss – remains a key theme. “It used to be the icing on the cake,” he says.

“Now it is the cake.”

But his vivid depiction of the “granny porn” he’s taken to watching goes on for a good long while after he’s made his point. And, as he acknowledges, starting a sentence with the words “One of the problems of being a millionaire . . .” is a sure way of earning our enmity. But he explores his exalted status so briefly that it doesn’t justify raising the issue.

Skinner is too good a comic to do a truly shoddy show. Though he pads around the stage in a tentative way, his reactions are still fast, he threads ideas and motifs through his hour, and he ends on a definite up – plying the best Heather Mills material around in a town full of Heather Mills material.

It’s a competent, sometimes colourful hour of stand-up comedy. But Skinner is circling round his subject. If he wants to tell us what it’s like to be Frank Skinner and 50, he should get on and do it.

Box office: 0131-556 6550 Tour: www.frankskinnerlive.com

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