Welcome to lunch with the Hamilton’s! An audience with a disgraced politician and his wife seems to be the hot ticket in town. They got such a vitriolic review from Three Weeks that SSP just had to turn up and see what the fuss was about.

Coming onstage with matching ghastly peach outfits and champagne on ice, they got their Max Mosely quips out of the way early along with some of their other political material.

Making constant reference to their previous lives as politicians without delving into anything libellous they tried their hardest to portray themselves as armchair pundits and even have terrible supermarket-type music to introduce their guests.

This kind of entertainment would usually result in a grimace which could earn you a gurning trophy but the Hamilton’s somehow get away with it.

That’s because well, come on, it’s the Hamilton’s for Christ’s sake. As one comic once described; they are the ‘most vacuous people in comedy’, the joke is that they don’t take themselves too seriously and they are aware of this all too well

They are able to draw some high profile guests and are not short of an audience - Michael Barrymore and Reginald D Hunter made an appearance during the show we saw. Christine holds the show together, and is best at keeping up a lucid flow of banter with a dirty quip or two, while Neil somehow adopts the role of idiot husband

Ultimately the Hamilton’s are entertaining for their novelty value. Swathes of middle-class anti-politically correct activists must swoon in their very presence. The joke will be over if they try to take this any further.

Tim Clark

The Hamiltons are appearing at the Pleasance Dome at 1pm until the 24th August.

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