Robin Ince flitted into the mainstream consciousness as Stuart Foot, an interviewee sat opposite David Brent in The Office in 2001.

Aside from his work with Ricky Gervais, he has met Peter Higgs (of Large Hadron Collider fame) and had space discussions with actor Brian Blessed.

All this must have rubbed off, for we were confronted with the intelligence, articulation and bombast that injected zest into his reportedly final Dirty Book Club.

The show recites passages of smutty literature from days gone by, leaving the audience in stitches at times, or face-palming with delight.

In a departure from the book club, Ince was accompanied by comic George Egg cooking his own food onstage – through necessity, he said, due to the commitments of performing. He produced pancakes using upturned steam irons before handing them out to the audience for tasting. And they weren’t too bad: who needs a kitchen when you have a stage?

His poetry in the second half, though inoffensive, didn't go down quite as easily.

Joanna Neary, who featured in a peculiar Brighton Fringe show curated by Ince in 2010, was more entertaining than on that bizarre night. She bristled with ideas, voices and quirky movements, if falling slightly short of delivering the material to match.

It was hard to tell how much of the show was Ince’s own opinion, especially when talking of Twitter as “a virtual world filled with moronic idiots”.

That wasn’t the case here, as Ince signed off with a vivid spectacle.