Last week I reviewed Russell Howard at Wembley Arena. It's the kind of gig a critic goes to with a moderately heavy heart. Wembley is not as cavernous as the O2, where the tiers seem to reach to the heavens, but neither is it an intimate club. I remember seeing a brilliant, inspiring Russell Howard gig in a shoebox-sized venue at the Edinburgh Fringe about a decade ago. Somehow I knew this was going to be very different.

And in a way it was both very different and just the same. Howard always was a confident, commanding performer and he owned the Wembley stage just as easily as he owned the Pleasance...well I was going to say 'stage', but it was actually just the floor in front of the seats.

In some ways he was actually better. He had some odd, noisy hecklers at Wembley and he managed to shut them up with a glare and a few choice words. I remember another small Howard Fringe gig in the noughties that was completely derailed by a couple of Saturday night drunks. Of course, these days Howard is more famous for his bulging biceps than his lazy eye so maybe people are less likely to mess with him.  

Anyway, the gig was perfectly enjoyable, but when I came to write my review I just felt that Howard was unchallenging and not doing himself justice. It wasn't just that some of his gags felt dated – mocking David Blaine is a glass box next to Tower Bridge? – it was that he was peddling the same brand of feelgood fun that he had peddled for years. He might have put the boot into the EDL but it was actually more like a light slippering. 

Of course, Howard has made his name with his BBC3 Good News show, so he is hardly likely to change the formula. It's just that as he gets older the fluffy stories about his nutty mum and his Take Me Out-loving brother will have to evolve. He can't do gags about cocks, farts and talk about pranks like signing his brother up to Grindr forever. He briefly did some good stuff about his atheism and I wondered if that was a way forward. It made me think of a recent Andrew Maxwell gig when the Irish comic mentioned almost as an aside that his wife is a muslim. I thought I knew a lot about Maxwell but I didn't know that and wondered why it was an area he had never explored onstage before.

So back to Howard. Does a comedian have to be challenging? Isn't making people laugh enough of an achievement? Of course making audiences laugh is the priority and Howard certainly managed that. He doesn't have a legally binding responsibility to make political pronouncements. He is doing a run at the Royal Albert Hall in April so people clearly like what they see. He doesn't have a moral obligation to try to change people's attitudes. I just think when a comedian is as smart as Howard clearly is it is shame he doesn't add another dimension to his act. I hope that will come one day. I left Wembley having enjoyed the gig, but thinking that Howard will surely be much more interesting in five years time. The pooh patter has to end at some point.