When I caught Jackie Mason's show at the Playhouse last year, I came to the conclusion he wasn't getting any better. At the Palladium last week he proved it. He can't. He's already best in his class. And that includes Alan King, Shelley Berman, Shecky Greene, the late Allan Sherman and Joel Grey's father, Mickey Katz. Mason's gently self-deprecating Jewish humour goes back to Julian Rose, Harry Green, Potash and Perlmutter, and even earlier, to the batchan, the cheeky jester at shtetl weddings who would insult all and sundry to raise a laugh. It was fitting therefore that he rounded off his two-hours-and-a-bit London Palladium show with some chazanath, in Hebrew blessing the bride and reminding the audience that he was still available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.

For the savage, bitter-sweet Yiddish orientated modern American Jewish humour, you've got to go back to the searing scalpel of the late Mort Sahl, though Woody Allen also pays it occasional lip service. We've got one of our own Jewish comics here too, Ben Elton who, like Mason, writes his own highly literate scripts. But whereas the hysterical long-winded Elton needs a disciplined Rowan Atkinson to get his points across, Jackie does it with one-liners, an arched eyebrow and hunched back.

Another thing. You won’t find any Castlemaine 4 Xs dotted with Mason's script. It's a family show. But his act is a species of alternative comedy and has been since well before the term was minted. The closest Mason gets to the favoured alternative explicits are Yiddish references to the male genitalia, shmock, a long-time put down on the New York stage and now passed into common theatrical usage along Shaftesbury Avenue. The only other repeated Yiddishism is Mason's comical expression of dismay - Oy! - a broch! , accompanied simultaneously with the clapping of sweaty palm on a chubby cheek.