The last time I saw Nick Mohammed live, I witnessed one of the all-time theatrical calamities, as the opening night of his West End Christmas Carol(ish) was abandoned after unrelenting technical difficulties. Talk about bouncing back: this new show is the opposite of that epic fail, a deliriously enjoyable hour of comedy meets magic meets more of the real Mohammed than we’ve ever before seen on stage. That’s a surprise, given he’s in character as his alter ego, the camp and bumptious northern know-it-all Mr Swallow. But the persona is more porous than before, transforming into Mohammed before our eyes – as if this were a coming out party for a comedian who has remained incognito until now.

For long-term watchers of the Ted Lasso man, that could hardly be more fascinating – the more so because Mohammed tells us it’s strategic, that he’s been compelled to get personal for careerist reasons. There’s a racial dimension to that, too, which he endlessly teases in Show Pony, replaying an encounter with a TV producer demanding Mohammed’s sitcom pitch be more ethnic, and offering up a fantastically twisty sketch about his supposedly white right foot.

So are we getting a glimpse of the real Mohammed? Or is he just giving us what the culture requires to hear? The 44-year-old makes that zone of uncertainty hilariously his own this evening, in a show mixing autobiography, self-abasement and the memory and mentalism tricks that have long been among his specialties. The teacher who inspired Mr Swallow is brought unforgettably back to life in a flashback to young Nick’s classroom. Mohammed’s skit-gone-wrong at last year’s Baftas is recalled with a cringe. And there’s some casually mind-blowing stuff with a Rubik’s Cube and a pack of cards – even if a lie detection stunt (by a man soon to appear on Celebrity Traitors) is sabotaged by a tipsy audience member.

You could argue there are several discrete shows in here, pulling in opposing directions. But that’s partly the point of this fantastic offering, which both dramatises the tension between the different acts Nick Mohammed could be, and delights us with all of them.