HE’S a firm favourite on Radio 4, no stranger to controversy, a committed republican, and well known for his left wing views.

So the question in my mind when I walked into the Tivoli was: ‘freed from the constraints of the Beeb, will this be a sustained radical rant peppered with fashionable four-letter words or something more entertaining?’

Wimborne has never struck me as a hotbed of red revolutionary fervour, so there just might be a bit of audience pushback.

Well, entertaining it certainly was.

Jeremy Corbyn’s selection as Labour party leader took a fair slice of the first half, but from the viewpoint of an amused (if affectionate) bystander.

His subsequent digs at the Tories were distinctly less affectionate however.

The anti-Conservative barbs seemed to cause general mirth, but when applause broke out it was noticeable that a number of the audience were not joining in.

The second half ranged over a number of topics, from our conversion into a nation of foodies, through the immigrant crisis into the gentrification of his part of London, which was once a rich mix of different nationalities but is now increasingly white, upwardly mobile middle-class.

“I moved there to get away from people like me,” he said. “But now they are all around me.”

Jeremy Hardy was on stage for around two hours and twenty minutes in total. No warm-up act, just fluent, far-ranging comedy from a natural stand-up.