At the start of his new show, Hello Ladies, Stephen Merchant displays a photograph with which the Guardian illustrated The Office's triumph at the 2004 Golden Globes. His co-writer, Ricky Gervais, and others are in the foreground, but the 6ft 7in Merchant looms in the background, his head lopped off at the chin. As the less attention-seeking half of one of British comedy's most successful double acts, this is not the only time Merchant has been cut out of the limelight. But now he is claiming centre stage, with a first solo comedy tour since he launched as a standup in 1997.

As an attempt to step out of Gervais's shadow – and Merchant classifies it as such in his opening remarks – it's a resounding success. There are Gervaisian touches here, in Merchant's mock-egotism – such as when, lacking a prop baby for a spoof play about teenage pregnancy, he nonchalantly produces one of his several Bafta awards, and uses that instead.

But this supposed arrogance is more attractive coming from Merchant, because it's offset by a blatant sense of his own ridiculousness. Pretend cockiness is just another symptom of the ineffectualness of a man whose name the newspapers get wrong and whose advances the opposite sex finds all too easy to resist.

Much of Hello Ladies is taken up with his unluckiness in love. Although, the more we learn about Merchant's pedantry and tight-fistedness, the less misfortune seems to blame. Decorously skirting chauvinism, he itemises the lengths men are unfairly made to go on first dates. Then he leers into a camera, and we're treated to giant footage of his lascivious sex-face. Not pretty. If Gervais has the biggest head in comedy, Merchant now establishes himself as the king of self-abasement.

Elsewhere, he stands tall – or at least, he makes jokes about doing so. Much as his forthcoming sitcom, Life's Too Short, mines stature for laughs, Merchant ruthlessly exploits his lankiness. There are gawky dumbshows of him stooping to enter rooms, and a very funny routine about being made to sit by the emergency exit on aeroplanes. In lesser hands gags about being lofty and sexually unsuccessful could seem hackneyed. But Merchant's joke-writing is of a high quality – trying to eject VHS porn as a panicky teenager is "like waiting for an old man to get out of the bath" – and his performance is priceless. He brilliantly pinpoints the absurdity of entrusting a passenger to open a plane's escape hatch by switching instantly from mortal terror to coolly efficient stewarding. Later, a bog-standard gag about text-message jargon transposed to real life is made hilarious by the tantalising delicacy with which Merchant's doctor delivers bad news.

The material won't all be new to standup fans; Merchant has been building up to this tour for years, and some gags we've heard before. But, in most instances, I'd happily watch him tell them time and again. More so than his illustrious partner, he can do funny just by being there. Ladies may spurn him, but standup fans should make a date.