South African comic Loyiso Gola has been a semi-regular visitor to the UK over the last five years. And he's more than paid his dues, earning the right to playfully but provocatively explore culture clashes between the two nations, with a side order of social commentary on the US. Without openly stating it, he sets himself up as a voice of common sense, his observations invariably shared in incredulous tones, not least when he reveals he had to pay £2000 to quarantine for eleven days in a hotel, simply to do this tour.

Dryly, Gola suggests that the UK's coronavirus red list of hazardous countries reflects a different, darker colour scheme at work, but satire tends to take a back seat to contrarian messing about. So his outrage at the price of Wimbledon final tickets prompts an amusingly childish tantrum of entitlement. The most satisfying routine of this variable hour, when he successfully fuses laughs and resistance to a dominant narrative, comes when he chides the British for smugly imagining themselves superior to Americans for the lack of guns on our streets, archly pointing out how firearms propped up a colonial empire.

Gola is adept at illustrating the absurdity of racism and the ways he can use it to his advantage. However, other threads running through this show feel underwritten, with his assertion that US popular culture is superior to the UK's reflecting little beyond his own preferences and prejudices. Meanwhile, his characterisation of America is strangely unwilling to acknowledge that Donald Trump has been replaced by Joe Biden in the White House.

When he's not getting bogged down in struggling to convince an audience member of the brilliance of Goodfellas, Gola's peevishness and stubborn partiality is a huge part of what makes him so commandingly funny. Unfortunately, that same illogicality can appear of little substance when applied to trivial things. And a fair few unfinished thoughts simply reflect the songs and films he likes and dislikes, the stand-up equivalent of a radio DJ filling dead air. This feels all the more inexplicable given that Gola's unhurried pace and use of pause is a recurrent, effective aspect of his delivery.

Loyiso Gola: Pop Culture tours until Sunday 31 October; review from The Stand, Glasgow, Saturday 23 October.