Before Sunday night's Golden Globes ­ceremony, host Ricky Gervais was promising a gloves-off performance. "There were about five things [the producers] didn't like in rehearsal," he boasted. "I said I wouldn't do them – but I'm going to. It's live. They can't stop me." By his words so must we judge him. Was this the no-holds-barred comic performance he told us to expect?

On his last live tour, Gervais's post-PC shtick seemed tired, the trademark self-­regard wearing very thin. And so too here, where egotistical material about The Office – and, worse, his penis – made a duff start. When will he learn that his spoof self-absorption is as obnoxious as the real thing?

But when Gervais got stuck in, one or two gags generated the type of response that must be music to this shock-peddler's ears. In his recent show, Science, Gervais directed his nastiest jokes at the absent and the vulnerable – but not so here. A witheringly sarcastic routine about the importance of acting tartly undercut the Tinseltown love-in to come, while a quip about Irish stereotypes sent up the sanctimonious "oblivious to colour and creed" guff that preceded it.

His performance, though, wasn't hard-hitting enough for some: the Hollywood Reporter called him "toothless", and sure enough, he did pull some punches. Joking about Mel Gibson's drinking is one thing – but off the leash, ­Gervais would surely make hay with Gibson's anti-Semitism too.

That, alas, is never going to happen at an event as stage-managed as the Globes – nor from a man as palpably delighted to be a Hollywood insider as Gervais. Yet there were at least glimpses of Gervais at his gadfly best.