Pity the poor writer who has to review Stewart Lee. Even those who love him, get a ribbing — along with his adoring audience. The fate of those who don’t measure up doesn’t bear thinking about; their fate being a merciless, if hilarious, teasing – lumped together with those reactionary columnists and gaffe-prone UKIP politicians who quite rightly bear the brunt of his surreal, circular humour.

“No-one,” he jokes, “is equipped to review me.” Gulp.

We’ve seen a run of high-profile comedians at the Oxford Playhouse of late, with Radio 4 darlings Marcus Brigstocke and Mark Watson, along with Simon Amstell and the scatological Andy Parsons.

None are like Lee, as he would have no hesitation in pointing out. While they tell jokes or make well-scripted observations on the absurdities of life (often barely absurd at all), Lee locks us in mind games; a cerebral version of ‘chicken’ where we are always the first to blink. It’s a one man-show but it’s not really stand-up.

It’s nebulous, unscripted and loaded with rage, bile and pathos; a comedic version of Brownian motion; Lee at times affecting a full-won mental breakdown — and blaming us. If it feels dangerous it’s because he holds a mirror to ourselves. He does this in an obvious sense, by adopting a whiny voice and speaking as our “our inner tabloid”, but also, more interestingly, by subverting the whole format of a comedy gig and what we expect from it.

Lee is no stranger to Oxford, a place he likens to a “white supremacist theme park” compared to his own neighbourhood in Hackney (“which is like Jerusalem but more violent and with more hipster vintage shops,”), but I doubt he’s ever given an audience such a rough ride — not that we didn’t all love it, even if we weren’t quite sure where it was going; the careful chaos and meltdowns building to neat intertwining themes and reveals.

“Is it all passive aggressive statements, or is there something else?” he has himself whinge on our behalf, before telling those who came just to support the theatre to go home, because they wouldn’t get it. Edgy stuff.

“Laugh in spite, not because of me,” he tells us. We do both.

It’s brilliant, unsettling and just too funny to bear.