Once in the Clifton makeup, Kaufman’s commitment was absolute. The ordinarily tee totaling vegetarian Kaufman would down thick steaks and slug back whiskey while in character. Backstage at comedy clubs, “Clifton” would snap at the other comics if they made the mistake of addressing him as “Andy.”

Cohen’s strategy is to make audiences laugh at homosexuality itself, or perhaps at his outrageous lampoon of homosexuality — and then think less of the unsuspecting people who take his act at face value. But Brüno can’t succeed as satire because it has no moral grounding or honest point of view.

Therein, too, lies the elephantine question at the heart of Cohen's comedy. Does his patented brand of "shock and guffaw" comedy involve real skill or merely nerve? And luck? And a whole lotta sweating over the editing console?

There's certainly no innovation here. In a pop culture positively brimming with reality TV, hidden cameras and prank-based comedy — Crank Yankers, Punk'd, Surprise Surprise, I Get That a Lot, The Chaser, The Jerky Boys, the list goes on — Cohen is merely the latest comedian to corrupt Allen Funt's classic Candid Camera concept.

The chief difference with Cohen is that his comedy is based on cruelty and embarrassment. He has no interest in observing human behaviour or in his victims sharing the joke afterwards.