"It is harder than I thought, standup comedy," says Stephen Merchant, returning to live performance after a decade's absence. But he makes it look easy. Within moments of his arrival, headlining the Lyric's Comedy Night, it's clear we're in the presence of a very amusing man. The writer and star of Extras and The Office, Merchant has taken to the stage, he says, for the "lucrative DVD sales" – which he won't have to share with "you-know-who". The spirit of his writing partner is never far away tonight – but Gervais echoes notwithstanding, Merchant showcases a distinctively geeky and fastidious comic persona.
In terms of subject matter, he plays it safe enough. The first half is about his height – Merchant is 6ft7in and has, he gloats to the audience, "been all of your heights at some point". He parleys the indignity of the lanky man's life (at New Year in Trafalgar Square, a young woman tells Merchant that her friends have arranged "to meet back at you") into a restless, worrisome comic persona – all breathless digressions and low-status. But not too low – there are flashes of Gervaisian arrogance, as when a randy Merchant loses patience with his date's endless chatter. "You've won a promotion at work? Well, I've won a fucking Bafta!"
But whereas Gervais does charmless, Merchant does endearing – even when joking about his pedantry or tight-fistedness. (On the latter, there's a neat routine about Judas's horror at the bill for the Last Supper.) The set ends weakly, with a performance of a play supposedly by the teenage Merchant, which cheaply sends up adolescent earnestness. But it's orchestrated with a winning fretfulness by our host, who as a standup looks set to give you-know-who a run for his loads of money.
