There’s something deep in the British psyche that thinks - or hopes - that laughter drives out evil. The same impulse that printed Hitler’s picture inside wartime chamber-pots wonders whether, if suicide bombers could just be told that they’re not the Messiah, they’re very naughty boys, then they might think twice about their career choice. Well, we’ll have to wait for Chris Morris’s Four Lions to find that out. But in the meantime we have David Baddiel’s softer-edged The Infidel.

You’ll be familiar with the “MacGuffin” that drives The Infidel - a newly-discovered birth certificate informs a Muslim North London minicab driver (Omid Djalili) that he was born a Jew. In truth, though, our hairy-backed hero turns out to be less Mahmud Nasir or Solly Shimsillewitz than Joe Bloggs: a very British Everyman. A halal Oxo-ad Dad who’s a bit rubbish at everything except loving his family - which is imperilled when the inconvenient truth of his parentage leaves them facing religious bigotry on all sides.

One might add, “...and hilarity ensues” but hilarity isn’t quite the word. A funny film, certainly, and Baddiel is a bright bloke, so there’s plenty to enjoy. But this is no Life of Brian and there will fewer sharp intakes of breath, or head-back shouts of laughter, I suspect, than appreciative smiles in the darkness as comedy boxes are ticked. (Though there are some truly great box-tickings, such as a brilliant sight-gag for prissy council bureaucrat Miranda Hart.)

If you go wanting to enjoy this film, you will; if you go to find flaws, they’re there. But director Josh Appignanesi delivers a good-looking, recognisable England that is, like Mahmud, a bit rubbish, but only truly bleak when it can no longer laugh at itself. And it’s no reflection on a solid British cast, or the always-lovable Djalili, to say that the chief reason to go see The Infidel is American Richard Schiff, whose shining performance as Mahmud’s grumpy, generous guide to his Jewish heritage lifts the film onto a different plane. No need to ask David Baddiel who’d play him in a movie of his life - he already has.