At a Las Vegas comedy festival in 2005, Jerry Seinfeld revealed that he wasn’t sure what to do after his mega-hit sitcom finished and he was left a squillionaire. Then, one night, he went to see Chris Rock live. After the gig, he walked home, burnt every piece of stand-up he’d ever written and vowed to get back on the road. Rock made him realise how great stand-up comedy could be.

At his first London gig, the British comedy industry turned out to see if Seinfeld was right. Jimmy Carr, Simon Amstell and Phill Jupitus mingled with a sold-out crowd representing every colour, class and creed in the capital. They were waiting for revelation, and Rock got pretty damn close to delivering one.

He opened with a sop to the home crowd on sterling v the dollar, describing how he tried to change $3,000 at the airport: “I’m thinking, there gonna be some happy strippers in this town! You know what they gave me? A loaf of bread.” Then straight into the presidential election, with jokes so strong they would shame any British comic who claims the epithet satirist. “Bush has done such a bad job, he has made it hard for a white man to run for president,” he proclaims, before slipping in a sly dig at his favoured Barack Obama (“A black man in the race, who didn’t get shot yet”), complaining: “He’s so cool, I don’t think he realises he’s the black candidate – he thinks he can win this thing fair and square.”

Rock’s smile is so charming, and his blend of the political, personal and pop-cultural so effortless, that he can work race into a Britney Spears routine – “They take the white kids quick, don’t they? Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown had crack in the bassinet, and they kept their kids. Even OJ got to keep the kids, and he killed their mom” – before slipping into old-school gags: “It must be hard being OJ’s kids – ‘Hey, tidy your room or I’ll kill you.’” He ends the riff on the problems he faces having grown up poor and hating rich kids, only to find that his own children are, indeed, rich.

Race is at the heart of Rock’s show, but he’s no politically correct zealot. Indeed, he’s almost an equal-opportunity offender, insisting context is all: “If I’m driving, and someone hits me, and he’s got one leg – I’m going to talk about the leg.” But can white guys say “nigger”? “Well ... not really.” Is that unfair? “You want to trade places?” he offers. “You get up here and scream ‘nigger’, and I’ll raise interest rates.”

Women aren’t exactly elevated in his world-view, being motivated mainly by money: “If you lose your job and your girl says, ‘Baby, we just gonna have to cut back on a few things’, then one of those things is you.” There’s some slack material on sex and relationships, with bits, recycled from old shows, about keeping his daughter off the pole and the differences between black and white women. Some of it is corny and clichéd, and the more disappointing because he’s proved he can do so much better.

Your correspondent’s vote for greatest comedy gig of all time goes to Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, recorded in 1979, when Pryor was 39. Rock is 42, and he’s the first comic of any colour who might pip Pryor for the spot. Not with this show. But I can’t wait for the next.

Chris Rock Hammersmith Apollo, W6, Tue-Fri; then at Brixton Academy, SW9, Sat

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010