Only in Britain, Lewis Schaffer notes, would audiences welcome the opportunity to spend an entire hour being berated for being useless by a brash, outspoken American.

He puts it down to our national arrogance; we take the abuse with gracious smiles because, at heart, we think he is wrong. There is certainly an element of that, but mainly it's because even – or particularly – when airing his most bombastic anti-British sentiment, he is very funny.

“Noo York Jew-ush”, he came here eight years ago to marry a British woman who he later divorced. Two children later, he finds himself a hostage, stuck in a country where people moan but never complain (“because that would mean you'd taken action”) and nothing really happens.

His stance serves him well. He is an astute observer and, lacking any desire to come across as apologetic or compromising, turns a fascinating mirror on us all. He doesn't spare himself – there's plenty of exaggerated Jewish stereotyping and personal deconstruction. But it's only a little sweetener before the next torrent of audience baiting.

It's a show that is oddly refreshing and, in its own way, rather British - its brisk, brusque rudeness hiding an altogether soppier sense of affection for its subject. Or maybe that's just that famed British arrogance again.