NINE thirty three? No night out ends at 9.33pm unless you've had a drink thrown in your face or clumsily splashed water in your lap during a tipsy toilet visit.

Nevertheless, Ricky skips off the stage a paltry 60 minutes after steering his Segway into a colourful set and a very warm reception.

As warm-ups go, he couldn't have had a better one. Canadian Stewart Francis is never in any shape to upstage Gervais. His pocket is full of upbeat one-liners that are funnier than his delivery allows. Jimmy Carr would have nailed them.

Ricky freely admits here that 'Science' doesn't play much of a part in tonight's act. Unlike his previous topics, Gervais doesn't so much skirt around the subject as avoid it completely in favour of an all-encompassing stand-up routine.

Which isn't an issue. Reading's finest is comforting company, and his relaxed, natural approach affords him more time to work a routine than one might allow a different comedian. It's just a waste of a decent set, that's all.

He makes a point of assuming there'll be complaints about his act, but in truth there are few moments that'll upend the most rickety of politically correct wagons, and even so, you'd be an idiot to expect anything less than the entire audience being called the most profane of words... in an endearing way.

A hilariously illustrated Noah's Ark book rightly gets it in the neck, the antics of Ken Dodd's hilltop fan is described in grotesque detail, and there's always time to have a go at fatties and his own fans, with their "messed-up DNA".

And then he says goodnight, jumps back onstage for a few minutes of encore, says goodnight for a second time, and the BIC lights tell us to get the hell out because we won't be getting a third helping.

Granted I didn't pay for my ticket but hundreds did, and £30 for 60 minutes of stand-up strikes me as steep, no matter how comforting the company.

And Gervais was good. He sailed happily between the tropics of funny and very funny without risking his bow into either hemisphere beyond.

But I shouldn't have been home in time to watch even a second of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.