The Pub Landlord, Touring

Al Murray is celebrating 20 years as his brilliant invention the Pub Landlord, an autodidact, xenophobic sexist with misogynistic undertones. Who better then, you may think, to run for a certain political party in the forthcoming election? You'd be wrong, because the Pub Landlord has founded the FUKP (the Free United Kingdom Party) and he, its sole candidate, is standing for the Thanet South constituency, where Nigel Farage of Ukip just happens to be running. 

Murray's new show One Man, One Guvnor is not, strangely enough, a political husting, although there are elements of that in the second half. He has introduced a few new things to entertain us – a five-piece rockabilly band, the Charley Farley Sunday Four, does a set on stage before the Pub Landlord makes his entrance, as ever grand and suitably overblown of course – and there is noticeably more interaction with the audience (don't be late, whatever you do).

The move into the political arena has given a terrific fillip to Murray's act

That interplay is essentially the first half, the Landlord guying anybody on the front rows with a job he doesn't consider real – on the night I saw the show art teacher, fabric designer, student – and demanding a round of applause for “proper” jobs such as teacher, nurse and plumber.

This interaction was superb and showed Murray on terrific form (and perhaps was better than the scripted elements of the show). It's high-wire stuff. The front few rows may be filled with people who do little of comedy value, or worse, those who think the show is all about them and overplay what they think is banter (it isn't).

But Murray was quick on his feet and knew when to leave well alone; one youngster came in ridiculously late with his dad and made it clear he didn't want to be there. Murray made a quickfire gag about difficult teenagers and moved on to more fertile, and better-natured, ground, finding a young woman studying theatre at university. “Extraordinary that a woman needs lessons in drama,” he said, filling his pint and giving the audience a knowing look. There's a fine line between acerbity and nastiness, and Murray is happy to tread it in the guise of this appalling oaf if it produces good comedy.

The second half of the show moves into the political arena, because, the Pub Landlord tells us: “The greatest country in the world is in the shit.” He makes mock of Scots for trying to leave the Union last year and, waving his frothy pint around in his usual bellicose fashion, he puts Farage neatly in his place. “What have things come to, that a bloke waving around a pint and offering common sense solutions to the world could ever be taken seriously?”

The Pub Landlord's gloriously daft election promise is “the other parties offer the moon on a stick. We'll do better than that. The British moon on a British stick.” Actually, he says, he is making only one promise – not to keep his promises. He subtly dismantles everything that Farage and Ukip represent, giving short shrift to a question from the audience about gay marriage (really not the answer the man was expecting) and explains global economics in the time it takes to down half a pint.

Perhaps the venue where I saw the show (the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank) doesn't attract as many of the fans for whom there is no irony whatsoever in Murray's comic persona, but this was a noticeably less angst-ridden experience for a daft old liberal like me who shudders when some people applaud the more overtly us-and-them material. There were only a few cheers for the Landlord's more outré opinions about the French and Germans.

For a while now I have felt the Pub Landlord had run its course, but the move into the political arena was an inspired one. It has given a terrific fillip to Murray's act and this is a great evening's entertainment.

• The Pub Landlord is touring until 30 May