OK, so I have to admit, it was a little disconcerting to see Sacha Baron Cohen without his “Borat” moustache from the eponymous film Cohen looked a little smaller than life, especially compared with the outsize character who caused such a sensation in Borat, the surprise hit that managed to be something for all people.

Sipping hot lemon tea at a coffee shop in Santa Monica, Cohen had the air of a man who had shed a layer of skin that had been worn to a frazzle. Most comics drop the act when the movie finishes. But for months last fall, wherever he went, Cohen arrived in full Borat drag, taking the Toronto Film Festival by storm, holding a news conference outside the Kazakh embassy in Washington and, praising Mel Gibson, saying, “It is you, not me, who should receive this GQ award for anti-Jew warrior of the year.”

The burden of being Borat took its toll, especially during months of filming when, to keep up the charade, he was Borat from dawn to dusk. “Even if I went to the bathroom, I went to the bathroom as Borat.”

Having perfected this sly shtick in television doing Da Ali G Show, where he posed as a gold-chain-encrusted hip-hop dunce, torturing a variety of government officials with wildly inappropriate questions, Cohen has become a master provocateur. Cohen’s breakthrough is that he presents his comedy in a realistic setting — with recognisable people, people who might live next door, as foils.

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