Tonight, comedian Jim Davidson will grace our television screens with a stand-up special (10.20pm, BBC1), recorded at one of his early haunts, the Victoria Palace. It shows how highly the BBC values him these days that it is screening the programme in such a high profile slot. And for a comedian whose right-wing views have managed to offend a significant chunk of the population, it represents still more of a coup. Could there possibly be more to him than meets the eye?
Davidson's position at the front ranks of the BBC rests with the drawing power of his family entertainment shows The Generation Game and Big Break. With the BBC suffering from an exodus of talent, it can't afford to sniff at the seven million people who choose to tune into The Generation Game each week.
Davidson's success lies partly in the fact that he preaches to a large constituency which remembers the days before the 80s alternative comedy boom. Tony Blair might have decreed the end of the class struggle this week, but a huge stratum of society still associates itself with the type of comedy which, like Davidson's, grew out of working men's clubs in the 70s.
That's not to say he hasn't put some thought into realigning his image. Since taking on The Generation Game, he has gradually dropped the bad language, overt sexism and characters such as the notorious "Chalky". In 1997, he even announced that he was shocked by his old routines and planned to clean up his act.
Like other performers of his generation, he has also begun to move inexorably into the establishment. Always a prominent Conservative supporter, in March this year he was elected to that bastion of Tory tradition, the Carlton Club. He's also chairman of the British Forces Foundation (patron, one Lady Thatcher), launched by him in May to provide entertainment for servicemen.
This shift into public respectability, though, took place behind a welter of highly publicised personal problems. His rise to fame - winning the television New Faces competition back in 1976 - has been accompanied by a troubled personal life. Married four times, he has had to contend with a stream of salacious tabloid stories about his relationships with glamorous models, with such headlines as: "TV Jim - I'm a sex addict"; "Why I hate my ex-wife's lover"; or "My living hell with TV Jim".
But such hiccups have failed to dent his popularity with the BBC, where he remains a highly prized commodity: last year he signed a £2 million golden handcuffs deal with them to fend off the likes of ITV.
One BBC insider who works closely with Davidson describes him as far more intelligent than his brash stage persona suggests, confirming he is an extremely shrewd operator. (He has a track record as a theatre impresario - this year he co-produced the £1 million musical Great Balls of Fire.)
He is also, the same BBC executive admits, prickly and defensive - the kind of person it's easy to take a strong dislike to - but someone you can't help laughing with in private because of his talent for quickfire gags.
Like any true performer, his public face can often be at odds with a harsher behind-the-scenes, professional demeanour. During a recent filming of The Generation Game, another BBC executive says, Davidson emerged from a stormy production meeting "with a face like thunder". Spotting fans outside, his face instantly lit up and in a second he was exchanging banter with them.
The complexity of his persona was also highlighted by a recent appearance on Room 101, the programme which asks celebrities to discuss some of the things they really hate. Aside from some predictable items: Richard Madeley (because he doesn't like men who are too much like women) and Motown music (he can't dance). The others pointed at a degree of sensitivity: the dark (he's scared of it) and beach holidays (they make his skin go freckly).
His act screened on BBC1 tonight, though, contains perhaps the most revealing thing about the comic in the 90s. Despite revealing that he can't actually sing, it also shows that there may be a nascent new man struggling to get out from underneath his "birds with big tits" attitude to women. In the song, What Does a Woman See in a Man? he sings (or screeches) of how men smell like orangutangs, laugh like donkeys, tell dirty jokes and spend all their time down the pub. In other words, they are useless. What, he asks, do women see in all this?
You have to remember, of course, that the same act includes material about sleeping with supermodel Elle Macpherson, dealing with thick (female) hotel receptionists and anecdotes about his friend David Mellor. Although he may have partially embraced the PC 90s, it's unlikely we'll see him on the same bill as Alexei Sayle for some time yet.
