Brendon Burns wrote earlier this week – in reference to Bill Hicks – that we shouldn't take comedians too seriously, nor make messiahs of them. I'm sure he's right, but I plead guilty all the same to putting the satirist Chris Morris on a pedestal. I'm not alone. "He has this reputation as the dark lord of comedy, this godlike presence," the Peep Show writer Sam Bain once said. Along with Hicks, Morris has an iconic status among discerning comedy fans as an artist whose best work pushes beyond mere laugh-generation to speak striking, unflinching truths about the world.

Another similarity between Hicks and Morris, another reason why their elevated status is so perfectly preserved, is that they were both cut off in their prime. Hicks by death; Morris, because he just stopped doing it. OK, so he's been operational in the past dozen years, making a Bafta-winning short film, co-writing the Channel 4 sitcom Nathan Barley, and writing and directing the suicide-bombing farce Four Lions. But as a comedy performer, there's been almost nothing since the 2001 Brass Eye paedophile special that sparked tabloid outrage and cemented his status as the most breathtakingly militant comic critic of our media-dumbshow culture.

But now he's back. First of all, making a rare stage appearance with Stewart Lee at the Royal Festival Hall last weekend, then being revealed as the co-star of the new series of Lee's Comedy Vehicle BBC show. Morris was already script editor on the show; now he is to take over Armando Iannucci's onscreen role as "hostile interrogator", posing questions to Lee between the show's standup segments. It's a tantalising prospect: Morris is one of the few men alive who can out-deadpan Lee, his bloodless poker face making the upward-twitching corners of Lee's mouth seem like a Coco the Clown grin by comparison.

So might this toe-in-the-water return to performing comedy justify hope of a proper Morris comeback? How our comedy, and our culture, crave a satirist with that fire in his belly, that moral indignation, that fearlessness and insight. It's a commonplace nowadays to say of this contemporary phenomenon or that instance of collective delirium (the royal wedding, the Olympics, the death of Margaret Thatcher) that they're crying out for the Brass Eye treatment. Which tells its own story about how toothless much mainstream "satire" has become. (On their 2011 tour, Punt and Dennis were advertising themselves as "kings of satire", which says it all, really.)

The likelihood is, these Comedy Vehicle cameos will allow just a glimpse of the great man, before he retreats back into the shadows. Which is fair enough. He's moved on from Brass Eye, his interests now lie elsewhere. Maybe we should be glad Morris isn't hanging around, diluting the industrial strength of his burlesque, sullying the memories. But I won't be able to look at that inscrutable-bordering-on-malevolent mug on the small screen without wishing Morris was back wreaking his devilment on Britain circa 2014, which needs his brand of tough love now more urgently than ever.

Three comedy events to look out for this week

Virgin Trains comedy carriage

A gimmick to promote this year's Glasgow Comedy festival, the "comedy carriage" finds eight standups performing to passengers aboard the 2.30pm London Euston to Glasgow train. Participating jokers include the Show Me the Funny champ Patrick Monahan and the livewire Canadian maestro Phil Nichol.

• Thursday 27 February (virgintrains.com/comedy-festival)

Tim Key

The former Edinburgh Comedy award champ and latterday Alan Partridge sidekick Tim Key launches his new show Single White Slut. Previous form suggests that this purveyor of oddball humour and gnomic comic poems will lay on something a mite more theatrical than static standup. The show transfers to the Arcola Tent after its sell-out Soho run.

• Monday 24 February to 8 March, Soho theatre (020 7478 0100); 10 to 29 March at Arcola Tent (020 7503 1646).

Festival of the Spoken Nerd

A national tour is well underway for the show that unites science, maths and comedy, with numbers bod Matt Parker, science broadcaster Steve Mould and ukulele-strumming comic Helen Arney. Proofs, experiments and geek gags are fizzing in their test tube. Ramshackle fun for the sci-ignorant and sci-initiates alike.

• Tonight, Artrix, Bromsgrove (01527 577330); Friday 21 February, Trinity theatre, Tunbridge Wells (01892 678 678); Saturday 22 February, the Old Market, Brighton (01273 201800).

More comedy coverage

• Brendon Burns on Bill Hicks: 'I felt like he was speaking directly to me'

• Bill Hicks: what is his legacy?

• Katherine Ryan, Simon Evans and John Robins dissect their comedy

• The science of comedy: can humour make the world a better place?