The role of a stand-up comedian can take many forms. On the one hand, they provide simple light relief and act as a release from life’s pressure cooker of trials and tribulations. On the other, they can be important social commentators who shine a light on the absurdities and inequalities of our daily existence.

The very best stand-ups can combine both roles seamlessly. Stewart Lee does just that. For years, Lee was considered the ultimate “comedians’ comedian” but had been off our TV screens for the best part of a decade. Before his recent return to the BBC with his Comedy Vehicle show, his last brush with mainstream success – actually, make that notoriety – was his role as co-writer of Jerry Springer: The Opera.

And we’re never too far away from a little controversy when daring comedy is concerned. We’ve seen Russell Brand being hung out to dry over the “Sachsgate” palaver and, just recently, Jimmy Carr was forced to apologise for a badly-timed Remembrance Day gag about the Special Olympics.

Pertinently, all of these elements feed into Lee’s latest show, If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One. Spinning off a comment from the current enfant terrible of stand-up, Frankie Boyle, that all comedians should pack it in when they reach 40, Lee – who is now aged 41 – weaves in all manner of serious subtext behind some hilariously silly surrealism to blow that argument out of the water.

First, a riff on taking a pirate friend to a children’s play park to break the ice before he really lets his anger off the leash to plough into the Top Gear team.

Although Lee argues that at his age he finds life merely provokes a feeling of disappointment rather than anger, he goes on to prove just the opposite. Jeremy Clarkson’s supposed carefree political correctness is exposed as calculated cultural button-pressing designed to create the maximum amount of column inches in publicity. And Richmond Hammond fares even worse as a simpering coward who “hangs around with the playground bully”.

Lee expands the point by telling us that he had once attended the same school in Birmingham as Hammond and saved the diminutive presenter from school bullies, thus creating his present on-screen persona. It’s a totally credible story until Lee tells us he has concocted it all just to make a point. And when the stand-up says that he’d wished Hammond had died in a recent car crash on the show you can sense the audience en masse seem to shift uneasily in their seats as they’re not sure whether to laugh or not. When Lee tells them “it’s just a joke” and refers them back to Clarkson’s oft-used get-out clause you can see his point.

But there’s no tiresome finger-wagging here. Lee’s a self-proclaimed “middle class liberal”, but his argument holds water.

Lee’s technical skill is awesome. His use of “callbacks” – a trick of the stand-up trade where key phrases or lines are returned to at key sections of the set is second to none. He takes his time, makes fine use of pregnant pauses, and can shift the emphasis in a routine through all manner of emotions in an instant.

By the end, this man who is supposedly too middle-aged to conjure up more than a dejected shrug about life has thrown his microphone to the ground and stomped off into the Royal Circle to deliver a frantic routine about, would you believe it, the tagline to a Magners pear cider advert. If this is what Lee calls mild, you can only imagine what he would have been like when he was young enough to get really worked up.