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Jackie Mason, the New York stand-up, looks very strange. It’s as if somebody shrank Tony Bennett and microwaved him for two hours. Mason is short, dark, troll-like, densely built, with shining bulbous lips and a twinkly expression of diabolical mischief. His hair gathers over his head in a wave of red-brown crinkliness. For his solo show he wears a sharp, grey business suit. He could be Rumpelstiltskin selling real estate.

All his jokes are Jewish. And none of them are. He uses ‘the Jew’ as a catch-all tag for a fretful, brow-beaten loser. ‘The Gentile’ is his relaxed, prosperous and self-confident counterpart. The Jew wants to impress people by sporting designer outfits but everyone who talks to him spends all their time reading labels. The Jew hates opera but goes there so that he can boast that he went. And what is opera? ‘Two Gentiles yelling and 3,000 Jews sleeping.’