Lembit Opik's first foray into standup comedy shows that strangeness follows him around like a heat-seeking Cheeky Girl. Less than a month after losing his Montgomeryshire seat, the former Lib Dem MP took the stage last night at the Backstage Comedy Club in central London, a cramped basement venue just a rat's tail from Leicester Square tube. It was his standup debut, a 15-minute set alongside another six comedians (the best of whom was the excellent Josh Widdicombe). Alongside the critics in the audience, I spotted at least one press photographer, as well as Stephen Pound MP – a mate of Opik's – and a smattering of TV cameras. Not many first nights are quite like this.

Nor are many of them so lacking in material. We endured a largely gag-free introduction thanking his lingerie model girlfriend, Katie Green, and the Conservative voters of his former constituency for enabling him to be there. There were self-deprecatory references to losing his parliamentary seat after 13 years, allusions to the Cheeky Girls and corruption in parliament, a duff anecdote about his name – almost an anagram of "I like to be MP", he told us – and a small section about the Daily Mail, which had quoted the event's promoter, Robert Meakin, on the likelihood of Opik being bottled off the stage.

Then, unwisely, Opik picked up a shoe and attempted ventriloquism – perhaps an attempt to upstage the previous act, comedian/vetriloquist Nina Conti. Ducking behind the brogue and adopting a silly voice, he didn't so much tell jokes as explain that, because Conti's monkey was only a puppet, and this was a real shoe, his was the superior act. He prefaced this section with the words: "Now, I was told not to do this." Whoever offered the advice was surely right.

But here's the curious thing – behind Opik's Liberal Democrat rosette (which he wore on stage, presumably in self-mocking reference to his disastrous election night) you could sense confidence, lucidity, composure, sharpness. His set had structure. All of this gives him two years on other novice comedians. One gag about becoming mayor of London, which gently ribbed Boris Johnson, and another about being ignored in a lift by Nick Clegg, were nicely delivered.

What are we to make of Opik's transformation into a comedian? Maybe it's post-election catharsis, perhaps even mid-life crisis. It was most definitely a publicity stunt. But perhaps we shouldn't write him off just yet. Opik clearly has an appetite for adulation and holding court, both of which are sated by standup comedy. So who knows? Perhaps this really was a career change.