London has its fair share of unorthodox comedy venues, but never before has a comedy show been taken to the Houses of Parliament. Until Monday that is, when Ivor Dembina performs to an audience of MPs

Unofficially speaking, the Houses of Parliament plays host to comedy every day, with its corridors full of bungling MPs and the Punch and Judy of Prime Minister's Questions. But officially, next Monday will see Westminster become a comedy venue for the first time, when Jewish stand-up Ivor Dembina performs his solo show This Is Not A Subject For Comedy in front of an audience of MPs and peers.

The event has been organised by MP for Medway Bob Marshall-Andrews (no stranger to comedy with his appearances on Have I Got News For You) following his shock at Israel's military attacks on the Gaza Strip last year. His increasing interest in the Middle East conflict led him to Dembina's show.

This Is Not ... tells the story of how Dembina had his own unconditional support for the Jewish state challenged when he visited Israel and the West Bank between 2003 and 2005, and the hostility he received from friends and family for his views.

Marshall-Andrews hopes Dembina's quietly affecting (and genuinely funny) hour will bring him support in his stance against Israeli aggression. Something which Dembina says is also an intention of the show: "It's a comedy show and is there to entertain, but it's also politically authentic – that's what I'm most proud of, the show's politics stems from my own experience.

Dembina, 58 and from Hendon, says: "It's unapologetic in having an agenda. I always hope the public leave my show knowing more about the situation, at least realising not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic or that all Arabs are terrorists. If I can influence the country's legislators as well then, great."

"The lovely thing about comedy is that it works best, and is most persuasive, when you leave the audience a bit of room to make their own connections, rather than being polemical. In that sense politics and comedy are very similar."

"Bob decided to have it early evening on Monday because there are a lot of debates on Mondays apparently and there is voting in the evening so there'll be a lot of MPs hanging around. I just hope the division bell doesn't go half way through my show and they all fuck off and vote! I'm looking forward to it, but I've got no idea what will happen."

You can see This Is Not A Subject ... for yourself at the wonderfully untouched and thespy Phoenix Artist Club near Soho. Dembina has had a residency there on Saturday afternoons in recent months and he plans to take it back to the Edinburgh Fringe this year. And it has been to more unconventional places than the grandiose gothic surroundings of Parliament – Dembina has performed it in a school classroom in Tel Aviv, to Palestinians on the West Bank and even the economic elite of Luxembourg (who "bloody loved it").

The most striking feature of the show is how engrossing the tale is. There are plenty of first-class lines in it, but yet you forget you are at a comedy show because it is underpinned by a sober story with moments of high tension – be it a showdown with a close family member or an after-curfew encounter with Israeli tanks in occupied Palestine.

Admitting to his own family and friends that he believes Israel should hand back the occupied territories takes guts, and that will have been good prep for making it into a public show. He equates it to "a Catholic getting up on the balcony of the Vatican and saying the Pope's a bit dodgy".

Still, he has rarely been confronted by an angry audience member, despite having performed it to many a pro-Zionist. For that Dembina must take credit, having taken a potentially inflammatory opinion and turning it into a considered, non-confrontational show towards those who disagree with him. Full marks also for making it accessible to the uninformed, where it could easily be opaque.

It is also a throwback to the comedian with "something to say". That phrase may sound a bit poe-faced, but it's the source of much great comedy, even today – just look at Glenn Wool, Brendon Burns and Richard Herring. And Dembina has been on the circuit pretty much since it was invented (he has run the Hampstead Comedy Club for about 20 years), the time of the "alternative comedy" boom when comics were very politically conscious – Nick Revell, Jeremy Hardy, Mark Steel, just to throw a few names out there.

Dembina says: "Most political comedy that we see now tends to fail because it's too polemical and tells people what to think. The other comedy that fails so-called satirists queueing up on panel games to say things. The rule there is – if it moves, attack it.

"It's light entertainment and it's funny but it's also very sneery, macho and dull. For it to pretend it is anything to do with politics is nonsense – you don't know where these guys stand. If anything they are distancing themselves from the world's reality.

"The job of a comic in my view is to take the risk of showing your own vulnerabilities, your own feelings, your own mistakes."

You can catch the show in at the Phoenix Artist Club on Charing Cross Road on Saturday, March 20 and 27. Dembina also runs the rather splendid Hampstead Comedy Club.. His website is www.thinkbeforeyoulaugh.com