It’s the accent, I’m sure, that makes Henning Wehn, the self-named German Comedy Ambassador, so laugh-out-loud funny. You may have heard it on the TV shows Have I Got News For You or Would I Lie To You?: a train of exaggerated diphthongs hurtling through the quirky territory of modern Britain. Caricaturing yourself is a canny way to get laughs, and it works.

It certainly worked this evening, with two hours of ‘Teutonic jolliness’ about life in Britain, in the lovely surrounds of the Playhouse, one of my favourite Oxford venues.

He’s not just about the accent or the stereotypes, though. Wehn’s humour is witty and socially intelligent: after poking fun at the State (and state) of Britain he will, in the same breath, massage in some emollient German-bashing, just to balance things. Even the really politically incorrect stuff he manages to turn into some kind of question over the genuineness of our seemingly liberal society. He is, to me, the human equivalent of words like ‘fahrvergnügen’ or ‘schadenfreude’: unique, German, and specialised at expressing breadth and depth of sentiment in a singular way. He’s got the zeitgeist of Anglo-European relations down to a baggy trouser wearing art and, like any good satirist, has a knack for distilling life into its most absurd elements. His idea of Britishness, though, might be a kink in his otherwise straightforward narrative.

“He used lots of phrases that even British people wouldn’t use,” I overheard an audience member saying on the way out. There were a fair few ‘cor blimey’ and ‘what a palaver’s. They cannot have been accidental. However, when he examines relations between Brits and ‘foreigners’—for example, talking about integration—Wehn’s concept of Britishness seems stuck in a 1960s time warp, where everyone looks and acts the same way (except even then, they didn’t). Not accounting for the heterogeneity of Britishness makes his modern-day comparisons ring slightly less true, and because his comedic strength lies in uncovering these (often uncomfortable) truths, on occasion it falls short.

Some of the funniest one-liners were from our very own audience, tasked with suggesting who should be to blame for Brexit. The guy who thought it was his fault (“because everything usually is”) has my heartfelt sympathy. Henning Wehn is in Oxford for two more days, with sold out performances. Tonight, the comedy was sweary and irreverent. Maybe some people might have been offended, but the solid applause and encore suggested otherwise. It was actually a refreshing exercise in humility to be able to laugh at oneself—and so heartily.