Preaching to the perverted - Russell Brand live

Russell Brand skips on stage - in what turns out to be women's leggings and a Frank 'N' Furter style leather jacket, beautifully defined curls swishing down his back - to AC/ DC's Back in Black. It's quite an entrance. He strikes a pose as a dramatically-edited film on a giant screen behind him reminds us of the less delicate points of Sachsgate, as if we've had time to forget.

It's all very exciting but style belies content in this oddly lacking show. He uses his hour and a half to mainly discuss Sachsgate and his disastrous hosting of the MTV awards, but with absolutely no new insight. Anyone with any interest in his career at all would already know what he has to say on these matters and that's what grates a little. He could have done more.

"Thank you for coming to see me in a medium in which I'm still allowed to flourish," he minces by way of introduction. And that's when you realise how important it is that he's back, back, BACK. He says some stupid things, he says some hilarious things, he says some sexy things, he says the kind of things no balanced person would ever say out loud - British comedy would be so much poorer without Brand.

It's debatable whether he should have taken something of a moral high ground by not making the whole Jonathan Ross saga the bedrock of his act, particularly as there was no new line on the matter. Although he reiterates he has apologised to Andrew Sachs and didn't mean to cause offence, a line about his (ahem) "magic wand turning sluts into celebrities" almost undid the good work.

He plays his official televised apology ("I looked like a bearded hostage!" he scoffs), and (once again) brags about how hilarious his song of contrition to Andrew Sachs was (playing it on screen and singing along). It's ungracious and goes a bit too far.

"Appalling," my colleague Ben whispers to me in the dark. "Where's Ken Dodd when you need him?" I think Ben is 25. There are plenty of women in the crowd old enough to be his mother, and even his grandmother. I get a bit confused as to the natural order of things.

Getting back to Sachsgate though, by making it the main theme of his show Brand gets to demonstrate the idiocy of the whole furore - which is something that really needed to be done, particularly in these days when the BNP will have Jo Brand investigated for the kind of throwaway quip she's been making for decades and the Daily Mail will repeatedly try to get Mock the Week booted off air.

And there's plenty of genuinely funny stuff inbetween. "I began to think the news was my own show," he coos, flinging himself around the stage in a comedy dance to the News at Ten theme. You realise there is nothing this man won't say or do for a laugh or a bit of attention. It works on the ladies (bien sur), but on the men, not so much.

"People don't laugh at me like that when I say the word bumming," Ben mutters dejectedly after one of Brand's many brushes with dubious taste. I must admit I got a little exhausted with the endless clowning this time, as good as it is to have him back.

Opening the evening was Mr G, the poet who worked with Brand closing his old Radio 2 show. He's good company, knowing, graceful and possessing a beautiful lyrical style. He is the kind of grounded character Brand needs around him (of Sachsgate, he says "I actually had the privilege of seeing my P45 on Youtube"), and as such was the perfect way to start the show.