Jim Jefferies review – filthy comic leaves a nasty stench

Two trips to the O2 in 10 days: two shows wallowing in faeces. Reader, the life of the comedy reviewer is not all glamour. After Jack Whitehall, now it’s Jim Jefferies. Having made his name in the UK and in his native Australia with misogynistic “bad-boy” standup, Jefferies made his fortune in the US with the sitcom Legit and his own show on Comedy Central. Alas, success has barely improved his live act, which – while not reaching the grim depths of his earlier work – is often boorish.

This is the kind of show that elicits cheers for offending the French and suggesting that those with peanut allergies “can fuck off as well”. Jefferies’ show The Night Talker circles around a rangy anecdote about his lactose intolerance, which finds him bursting to go to the toilet while on a date with a germophobe. Tension mounts as we wait to see whether 42-year-old Jim can keep the poo in and – very important, this – get laid.

He likes sex, does Jefferies – or so he keeps telling us. He likes it so much that he suggests taking a knife to women to gouge out new holes. Like many a straight male standup, he also fantasises about being gay. “How nice would it be to be able to punch your partner?”

He’s only joking, of course. And it’s liberating, right, to be able to say those things that pesky PC and millennials (“the worst people that have ever been on our planet”) keep censuring. It certainly looks like it: the man next to me punched the air and made gunfire noises at all his favourite poo and sex remarks.

While never inspired to such revelry myself, there were moments when Jefferies raised a smile. One routine has wicked fun with Michael Jackson hiding his crimes in plain sight. A section on the movies, gender and cultural appropriation zeroes in on Hollywood double standards, before curdling into machismo. Jefferies declaims it all narrow-eyed and with a pained expression on his face, and after 90 minutes of his show, I fully empathised.

• At Resorts World Arena, Birmingham, Thursday, and Manchester Arena, Friday. Then touring.