Comedy news: Friends' reviews

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The Camden Crawl, reincorporating comedy to the main event after last year's breakaway Comedy Crawl was recolonised, is a game of two comedy halves. For comics on a Saturday afternoon, the picture is a tad grim: for most punters the comedy is a handy filler before the main event of the evening's music, and they already have one eye on planning to get wrecked. But for comics on a Sunday afternoon, they have something more akin to a hungover afternoon at a summer festival, with a crowd relaxed in its hangovers and with a willing touch of raucousness.

That certainly explains the not-exactly-stellar reception given to Knock2Bag's cracking Saturday line-up at the Black Heart, the strongest on offer for Saturday's Crawl. The audience isn't precisely unappreciative; more distracted and tuned out.

First up to try and crack them was Pat Cahill, who's been having a marvellous year with a finely-tuned set of songs, and more often than not, plain noise. It's absurdity done with with such common-or-garden delivery that the whimsical excesses of musical comedy have been successfully hacked away. The audience seem slightly unconvinced, but as is a common thread today, that doesn't look to be Cahill's fault.

Fact: the first comedy I ever saw in Camden eight years ago was MCed by Alex Zane (I didn't say it was going to be an interesting fact). This is relevant because it occurred during Joel Dommett's set that they are, to all intensive purposes, the same person. Both present(ed) on MTV. Zane ran Popworld into the ground; Dommett spoofed the format on Popatron. Both have floppy hair that can make women ovulate at 50 paces. There's a similar style, too, although Dommett seems willing not to rely on his big smiles and easy enthusiasm to carry a room, getting his back into jokes on how he lives in the world as a hoodie-era fop – something that goes down well, given the audience.

Straight stand-up seems to be doing best with the crowd, and anyone attempting one-liners or character comedy is given pretty short shrift. Damien Slash's actorly origins are what make his characters naturalistic, but without some engaging, easy-target jokes with his banker and music A&R impressions to pull out his pocket at times like this, it feels like a set that needs to follow the mood more.

Adam Hess is hitting the same engagement problem with his wall of one-liners. Both Slash and Hess have made their name with live versions of internet-friendly comedy (YouTube and Twitter, with Hess even mentioning the number of retweets each joke that struggles here has had). Maybe there's something in the problems of translating screen formats to the stage. Then again, maybe the audience are too busy thinking about seeing Gaz Coombes.

By contrast, the engaging, big-eyed characters of Oyster Eyes mean they probably have the best afternoon of anyone here. Shopping channel spoofs are ten-a-penny but the killer Eurotrash accents and attitudes keep it funny.

The second half has been subject to heavy alterations, with no Cardinal Burns, Hannibal Buress or Ben Target. Brian Gittins hits a similar character comedy wall as Slash earlier, with the Epithemiou-esque character having to rely on falling down a lot to prise the laughs out. Still, he's found an abrasive tone that seems to work to get the laughs out: Nick Sun is a natural follow-on, bringing his now-familiar but expertly-crafted lines on racism and identity to the stage. 

The audience make a sharpish exit before Colin Hoult's struggling comedian character Mike. Phil Kay, by contrast, seems to have decided that he's going to enjoy himself regardless of what else is going on in the room. After his recent 'onstage meltdown' there's a real frisson around Kay's appearance. Even contentedly playing the guitar in the corner of the room about a radiator for what must have been a solid five minutes continued to feel like it was teetering on the verge of madness, even if Abandoman have nothing to worry about in the improv music stakes.

And for most people, that's it: Simon Fielder is a literally-last-minute fill-in for Buress, and he makes a decent fist of joking about the situation, but half the room is already heading for the door.

SUNDAY

So that's Saturday, what of Sunday and the hangover crowd? For a start, it is an actual crowd who are largely committed to the whole afternoon with Really Lovely Comedy. The focus is on tried-and-tested routines, and it's none-the-worse for it. Thom Tuck is bringing his Disney DVD chat to MC duties, which is bang on the hungover-on-a-sofa chat angle that a Sunday needs.

McNeil and Pamphilon, the self-declared 'white thirtysomethings who won't give up the dream' are offering up a free draw of their sketches to avoid drawing up a set list. Whether it's sketches playing to the crowd – trying on coats, testing out parental sketch ideas – or sticking to tightly-scripted sketches on how baffling old money is, their sparkiness marks a great way to set the show off.

And if you want sparkiness, the Black Heart has Patrick Monahan. Even when his material veers into hack territory, the ever-hugging Monahan can work a room like no-one else. What's possibly more remarkable is that the current starry-eyed turn his career could have taken doesn't seem to have knocked his affability in the slightest. 

We're deep into Edinburgh material testing with Jim Campbell, taking his first full hour up this summer on the pitfalls of turning 30. With such a common theme, it's really a basic question of competence. And he has the rock-solid bearings of a much more experienced performer, albeit with unfussy material that doesn't push the boat out too far.

'Competent' feels like an almost damning-with-faint-praise tag to wield for Jay Foreman too, but it shouldn't be: his typical mix of friendly stories and party tricks with faultily-sung Beatles numbers tightly matching the room's mood.

The Beta Males have held their own in the teeming market for sketch groups by mashing together great initial premises with tight scripts and tighter acting. The manliness of car ads is a tried-and-tested skit brought to life with uproariously funny lines. Fairy tales and old films are also in the firing line with high concepts brought to life with lowbrow gags. 

The show is rounded off by Frisky and Mannish, who seem to be at an interesting career crossroads. You've got to give them credit for throwing everything against the comedy wall at the moment to see what sticks now their three-year pop education trilogy has finished, although this set has the feel of a Best Of for those years. Still, there's a reason the punters are queueing down the stairs: farmyard Girls Aloud hasn't got tired yet.

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We have been avid attendees of StarSearch, the flagship event of new club Deansways in the basement of Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, scratching up two heats of the talent show before seeing Thursday's final. 

Considering this is the first regular night for Deansways, the format has managed to find a slickly unslick DIY aesthetic to pull together a tight show. (Strictly speaking, it ran many years ago in Camden with Trevor Lock and Paul Foot, but it's been resting a while.) There's the sharp-suited host, Trevor Lock, who anchors the show on stage and gives the acts some support if they're taking a rollicking from the judges. There's sixties-era Corrie extra Hatty Ashdown gossiping with acts backstage on an easily-distracted handicam. 

There are three big-character judges, led by by the other-worldly Ross Lee (and for the final including the only agent who could out-flamboyant his client Louis Spence, Colin Evans, and Chris Dangerfield). There's an incompetent tech guy, some free Polish food from one of the audience and a woman doing a sketch of the judges. There's a venue done up like a ship, a bar whose most exotic drink is Newcastle Brown Ale, and Karl Schultz laughing like a drain throughout the entire show. It's really quite a lot take in.

Actually, it would be much too much if it wasn't for two crucial elements. First there's the not-exactly shy and retiring Harry Deansway, who runs the night and club and is clearly trying to set himself up as an impresario of the east. Fair play to him: it takes nerve to start up something from scratch, and there's certainly room in the area for more shows. And here he's stuck right into the action to make it fit whatever his vision is, even strutting across the stage during the winner's announcement to order directions at Lock.

And then there's the acts themselves, who give some focus to the circus going on around them. Given the amount of formatting in the night, there's only actually room for four acts, most of which have turned up on TV talent shows for people to laugh at. 

Which is where the one obvious problem with the show comes in: the age-old talent show conundrum of working out whether you're laughing with or at the acts. There's no doubt there's some pretty vulnerable people on stage here, but they seems to be having a lot of fun. Each finalist's turn is prefaced by a video of the contestant made with Pappy's Mathew Crosby which seems to skirt the line of acceptability more tightly than any other section.

The thing that probably saves the show from the worst possible excesses of the format is that the judges and hosts do get what could be easily ostracised characters involved. The judges in particular seemed to make effort to chat with contestants outside the structure of the show, and the fact they aren't bundled straight out into the cold does seem to make the difference between this and a cheap-and-cheerful TV talent show. Then again, I can't tell whether there really is a difference, or whether it is just such a fun night that I want to pretend there is one.

I've gone to StarSearch with several different people and every one has ended up asking themselves the same question. Still, this is probably the most fun comedy night I've been to since last Edinburgh, although that doesn't really mitigate the problem with the acts.

It sells itself as the talent show lover's talent show, and it's not wrong: the pros and cons of the format are here in a nutshell.

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OTB put on a set of short plays, the Descent, over the weekend. There are probably spoilers ahead, in case you have stumbled your way here before you go and see the same plays. Consider yourself warned.

FRIDAY

It's 10pm in a bleak National Rail storage tunnel underneath Waterloo. There are four plays about to be performed by keen members of OTB Theatre productions among the abandoned office furniture. There's also, implausibly, a sell-out crowd.

This first airing for OTB: The Descent at the Vault Festival isn't an easy sell, and Tom Rosenthal has been landed with the job of guiding the (surprisingly sober) audience through the evening. He's a rather good fit for the show, keeping the mood from flagging when the crowd starts itching to head for the bar when they remember it's 10pm on a Friday and they're sat in a tunnel.

There's a clear pattern for short plays by new playwrights: try to set up a convincing scenario and then attempt to hoik a sharp left turn. 

The evening kicks off with Babies, a pacey tale of a couple attempting an adoption (scenario) who encounter an adoption officer who wants to split them up and just give one of them a baby (hoik). Low culture comparison alert: the writing displays more than a flash of those episodes of EastEnders where people go to court to give character testimonials about good friends and accidentally land them in it. Just like in Walford Crown Court, although you can see exactly what's coming, the writing stays just the right side of good enough (shut up, I love EastEnders) that you want to stick around to see what happens. And best of all, it's delivered with more than a steely flash of Stella Gonet in the in-control adoption officer, Sarah Langrish-Smith.

It's a broadly similar picture with Closure, where an all balls-out salesman teaches his nervous colleague how to sell advertising space. Lessons in fronting require a convincingly anxious second fiddle – definitely here – and a master of over-confidence – who is sort of here, if a little bit over-reliant on the fine art of shouting to underline his dominance. Again, the hoik brings no surprises, but the writing keeps it just the right side of diverting.

Love Organ is the one piece that really struggles in this time slot, and there's a wariness in the cast – trudging through a marionette show of nascent romance – that suggests they know it. 

Health and Safety is the most willingly comic of the night's plays set in the health and safety office of a shopping centre, broadcast straight from Daily Mail Reporter's most terrifying dreams. However, there's a black widow of a new officer, whose prim and proper exterior – pitched perfectly by Clare Buckingham – hides a penchant for destruction. If you can get past the straw dog of elf'n'safety gone mad then it's a tidy ten minutes on the modern world equivalent of frustrated Catholic guilt getting unleashed.

SATURDAY

While Friday's Descent was stuck in one arch, Saturday saw the whole of the Old Vic Vaults put to work. It's a format that fits the different stories, with the audience split into four and led around five staging areas by in-character tour guides. Despite their best efforts, though, audience interaction was at a low – although you can perhaps forgive them for being less forthcoming with regimental tour guide rather than sexy bear tour guide.

First up it's a trip out to the bins for 24 Hours, as a girl gives a speech on the sort-of news about how long she's got left to live. While the spelt-out message is much what you'd expect from a new playwright, it's no worse for it, thanks to an earnest and affecting delivery. The only thing that  breaks the spell are punters passing by to go to the Portaloo.

Then it's outside to grafittied Leake Street for a brief lecture from a homeless couple, prefacing Rats Nests, following an upper-class girl 'rescuing' her bit of rough to the some newly-gentrified flats. It's a horribly pertinent play for the audience, given that we're stood in an arts event (sound the gentrification siren) near one of the biggest meeting places for homeless people in London. There are moral axes being ground by the writer, but given their relevance it's kind of hard to ignore them. The underlying steeliness to the girl who knows what she wants from the world she's decided she has figured out (what is it about Descent and steely women?) helps hold the whole show together.

Upstairs it's time to meet Barry and Ange, a stab at portraying a working-class couple that feels miles wide of the mark, but who put on a diverting enough chat on the perils of bringing up kids today.

But the best was saved for last with Relinquish. While the other plays had great spaces to take advantage off, the team here really went to a lot of effort to transform this space and get the most out of it. A pitch-black room is slowly lit by eight bulbs, and a man and woman with paper bags on their heads meet each other in what turns out to be a cafe. She is a recalcitrant mother who gave him for adoption as a child; he's a wary man who's lost his footing on life. The sparse but balanced dialogue gave the actors enough room to deliver plenty of touching moments with what has to be the most effective hoik on show this weekend.

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Thinking of a Gap Year in 2012 but need to read up on where to go? Look no further than the trials and travails of Sloaney traveller Orlando Charmon, whose new diary has documented all you need to know for a lash-fuelled travel experience.

Described as the ultimate guide to banter, you are invited to join Orlando on his Jager-fuelled hijinks across the globe, getting lashed with Hugo Chaves in Columbia, finding him stuck in prison in Burma, and dreaming about shagging Yoda in Japan along the way.

The posh tongue-in-cheek character whose YouTube video became a huge online hit, racking up almost 4 million views on one video alone – and his new travel diary is a succinctly written satirical take on what has become known as a right off passage for anyone in their late teens.

With his take on the ignorance of some travelers author Matt Lacey touches on some of the inconvenient truths of a gap year experience. From being dragged around 'boring museums' aimlessly seeking enlightenment (and secretly thinking of beer) to the whinging hacks who ask why they don't 'have their own travel blog'.

The book is also well researched, with the story based on real bars and clubs to spark the memories of people who have been there, done that, and got the T-shirt but might want to relive it once in a while. I laughed especially while reading Orlando's account of Byron Bay and remembering my own visit to the notorious Cheeky Monkey's nightclub at the tender age of 18.

What Lacey has managed to achieve with Gap Yah Plannah is to take a look at the whole experience of travelling on a gap year and has mock not just the stereotypical posh traveller, but to a certain extent the whole gap year bubble itself.

Throughout the diary there are subtle hints of the ridiculousness of travelling to find culture, but constantly having the guiding principle as the money – beer ratio, or cash-lash ratio in his mind – which is closer to the truth than many may want to admit. 

Astutely written and well researched Gap Yah Plannah may not help you actually plan anything, but could be considered essential reading for any discerning gap year traveller.

The Gap Yah planner is published by Fourth Estate and is available on Amazon.co.uk 

Tim Clark

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Apart from a few high-profile venues South London is largely quiet when it comes to comedy nights, especially in the forgotten void south of Waterloo. So to learn of a new comedy night Always Be Comedy (ABC) in Kennington establishing itself for putting on a number of talented new comics was refreshing news.

Introducing the house rules in a gameshow style format compere James Gill managed to liven the audience up for the first act while clearing out old rubbish from his house - an assortment of unwanted gifts which looked like a like a recession-hit Christmas included Die Hard 4 and In Gill's own words 'Frankie Boyle's latest hate-ridden tome'.

The first comedian on was Stephen Hill who, hailing from a small corner of Hampshire performed a 15-minute set which held a lot of promise. A skit about the band Busted initially filled me with dread but Hill managed to construct an excellent five minute semi-rant about his hate for the band while his piece on exercise was similarly well constructed.

Other acts from the evening included Kat Brown, Kelly Kingham, Patrick Lynch and Francis Foster, however the other pre-headline highlight (for me at least) was a short set by Mr Susan, whose improvised jokes on the venue's décor allowed him to ease himself into a quirky routine which took everyone by surprise.

However the main plaudits should be saved for the headline act. Walking on stage like a force of nature Naz Osmanoglu is an act who is almost destined to be a household name before the decade is mature enough to enter pre-school.

Having seen his show 1000% awesome at the Edinburgh Fringe I was already aware of most of this set however, with time running low and an audience already shifting in their seats by the time he took to the stage  Osmanoglu took apart his well crafted set as and when the need arose, dipping into his material whenever the audience allowed while spending the rest of his time ad-libbing a better five minutes than many comedians could write.

If anything the only criticism is that the night tried to pack too many comedians into the show and by the time Osmanoglu had taken to the stage most of the audience had already had their weekly fill of mirth.

It was a fitting end to a gig which held some genuine surprises, if compere and organiser Gill can unearth comedy gems on a regular basis then ABC could in time become a stalwart of the South London comedy scene.

Always Be Comedy is appearing at The Tommyfield this Thursday (20th October) with Michael Kossew, Lucy Jagger, Scott Merrington, Leo Kearse, Rachael Firth and headliner: Rob Collins

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Big Fat Gypsy Gangster is, on paper, a pretty ropey proposition. It's a British comedy. Worse, it's a spoof East End geezer film. It focuses on a claret-spitting man mountain called Bulla who's leaving prison and re-entering the real world. And it co-stars Tulisa from N-Dubz and Rufus Hound.

The film suffers from all the problems this description would suggest. But dig between the clichés, the often directionless plot and the sprawling cast, and there are some very funny comedy moments. 

Both the good and the bad appear to spring from the fact that this is very clearly a project of one man: Ricky Grover. He menacingly plays Bulla, and the best funny moments come when the film focuses in on him. His rambling description of his mother is a laugh-out-loud highlight (“She worked down the market pulling stalls. She was seven foot tall”; “I was born on a snooker table...she was two weeks in labour”). 

And there are other little touches that betray Ricky Grover's comedy eye. During the opening credits we see him throw his dwarf henchman through a van window to get in the vehicle in a hurry. It's a two-second shot hidden amongst a dull hard-man montage, but it nicely represents how there is the odd nugget of comedy gold in here.

So there are great lines and moments in the film, but the project also comes across as a singular vision that a script editor wasn't allowed near. The film is framed as being about an American documentary maker who is obsessed with East End gangster films, but it comes off so sneeringly about Americans that it acts more as a study of post-Empire attitudes than a comedy. It could easily have been ditched without taking anything away from the film.

There is also little direction to the story, with an awful lot of telling the audience about Bulla without actually showing us that much about him. Once you've seen one scene of cockney hard men shouting at each other like an episode of EastEnders, you've frankly seen them all. 

The sprawling cast, too, doesn't do the film any favours. How can Rochelle Wiseman, a member of The Saturdays, be unable to convincingly act as a girl band member? Why are Derek Acorah and Rufus Hound here? With an absence of any comic talent, they add up to the distractions rather than the presumed intention of providing a kaleidoscope to Bulla's personality. Even the two most high-profile names in the cast don't bring much to the table: Steven Berkoff's appearance as Bulla's guru is unmemorable, while Peter Capaldi's turn as his therapist doesn't bring much to the table.

The two noble exceptions are Omid Djalili's money man (usefully letting us know that Bulla's assets include a “fish and chip shop stroke shoe repair place”), and Laila Morse, better known as Big Mo off the EastEnders. Her role as Bulla's Aunt Queenie is like seeing Mo let off the leash in some post-watershed version of the soap.

All in all, it's a mixed bag of a film. The irony is that while this film feels like the untampered vision of one man, it would have been better to focus in tighter on the central character himself. But if you can stand the filler, there's some good ideas bubbling around. 

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34 is a strange age for a man to be as angry as Michael J Dolan, and the audience in his show last night certainly seemed to take a while to get a measure of him. 

He's not angry in a juvenile sense, although he certainly rages against the entire world; he doesn't exactly have the world-weariness of an old grump, although there isn't anyone or anything that escapes his anger. 

The result is a spiky hour of laughs that the rambling angry man tag Dolan has taken on doesn't entirely do justice.

Raging comics tend to get a bit boring after a while, and Dolan would be the same were his arguments not so tight. He's a raging id, eloquently giving voice to the bit inside everyone who sometimes really do feel that their friends are energy burglars, or that health-conscious friends have had all the joy sucked out of them.

Even when his arguments seem a bit off-target – the supposed misery of holidays, the pros and cons of Ryan Gosling – they contain enough original material to keep the hour fresh.

This is the sort of show that audience members who have had enough of comedians trying to be upbeat will get the most out of. Having just seen the excellent but unremittingly positive Jason Cook, Dolan was an ideal contrast to provide some rebalancing of mood.

He does lose his direction with his material a few times, and a fairly indifferent audience can't have helped. There does seem to be a lack of self-belief that is leaving him open to getting thrown by people not going with him on certain jokes. 

But there's enough surprising material on offer that he shouldn't be. With more focus on digging up great lines and dumping the less original material – step forward, cat litter jokes – this could be a great hour of anger.

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Robin Ince is something of a quiet giant of the comedy world. He has written for Ricky Gervais and Alastair McGowen and has performed across many formats. He presents a radio show ‘The Infinite Monkey Cage’ with Brian Cox, whom he calls the “sexy face of science”. His show ‘Star Corpse Apple Child’ is similarly all about physics and entropy and stuff...

Ince delivers part comedy tract, part talk about the wonders of science. He encourages us, as others have done, to see the beauty in science. It could be that I merely agree with him, but I liked this show very much.

He muses on the idea that the more you learn the less you know. “You become stupider the older you get”, he says, meaning that with time one comes to realise how small a slice of the entire pie of human knowledge we are aware of, to use his metaphor. Yet he says we should never stop asking questions about everything.

He illustrates his points by quoting Feynman and Sagan straight frombooks, which, as my philosophy tutor once told me, is quite effective. It all sounds very deep and serious, but it isn’t. Rather, it is delivered with professional comedy finesse and witty little stabs at Creationists and their like.

The show had two guests, Jon Ronson, who read from his new book in a very entertaining fashion, and Helen Arney who provides brilliant comedy music interludes. She is very charming (you can also see her filling Carol Vorderman or Rachel Riley's shoes on ‘Comedy Countdown’, another show which is well worth a look, especially if you are a bit of a geek*).

This show is not really like a show so much as a montage of clever comedy entertainments, sort of like Thai food, lots of interesting little bites. However, it is the most enjoyable thing I have seen this year. If you are a thinking man/woman, this is your bit of festival crumpet.

*‘Comedy Countdown’ is Countdown, literally, but with comedians carrying out the roles. It is a bit like being the studio audience for a radio 4 comedy – but clearly Countdown wouldn’t work for radio, unless the listeners wrote it all down... well actually considering the people who watch Countdown... hmmm, I might ask myself why I enjoyed it so much... yes I guess if you are a pedant and like getting a word that nobody thought of you will definitely like this (it’s very funny too).

http://www.robinince.com/

http://helenarney.com/

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Chat shows are tricky things to review because pretty much the whole shebang changes on a daily basis, standing or falling on the guests involved.

The edition of Tom Allen's Afternoon Tea we saw (Thursday 25 August) was a neat case in point. When the guests are up for a bit of a meandering chat about nothing more taxing than cake, then Tom Allen gets to be the consummate host. First guest Sarah Millican was always going to be an easy win for Allen, but the appearance – which ended up running well over the average guest slot – was a masterclass in how to entertain a room while chatting about nothing.

When the guests are keen to talk about something specific – namely, trying to flog their show at all costs – then there's only so much a host can do. Jarlath Regan didn't seem very interested in talking about anything else, which would probably explain why the audience seemed to be more interested in watching Millican go to town on eating her cake. Allen and Millican both attempted to bring some more amiability to the slot, but it's doubtful that Terry Wogan could have tempted Regan into joining in.

These are two opposite poles of chatable guests, but Allen is more than capable of chatting with anyone who is willing to play along. There was an all-too-brief chat with Deanne Smith about international audiences, and despite a slightly odd start with Benet Brandreth (in retrospect, we reckon it could have just been two conversational tigers getting the measure of each other's chat) there were three great guests on offer here.

So that's the guests, what of the host? You would expect Tom Allen to have an early Graham Norton sort of vibe – and he does – but it is mottled with an unexpected streak of Eddie Izzard. That's partly in the delivery and mannerisms, but there's a willingness to vanish into his own little world ('all this social interaction is great. I didn't have much when I was younger. I told all the other children I was an emperor') and a real inviting warmth with his audience interaction.

The only quibbles are with timing – while no-one was contesting the triple-sized slot that Millican ended up having, trying to squeeze in three other guests just didn't fit – and with the enforced conversation starters. Allen is best when he is just having a rambling chat, and there was the odd conversational segueway that felt a tad clunky.

That, though, is really nitpicking: the standard of the guests being booked has been high and this feels like just about the most natural format possible for Allen. With a bit more consistency in drawing out the best of his guests, it would be great to see this show return next year. 

Tom Allen's Afternoon Tea is at the Gilded Balloon until Sunday, get tickets here

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We had originally written a five-star review for Men of War, as their show included the funniest and best handled accident we've seen at this year's Fringe. 

Except it would appear to not be an accident. Chortle saw it happen. Two other people we've spoken to have seen the same thing. And acted corpsing – however wonderfully convincing it is – is a hollow business.

It's a shame, but the convincingness of the supposed fail does point out some of the best things about the troupe. They can act, and vanish completely into their clearly-defined characters: Stephen Harvey's rambling retiring headmaster, Cariad Lloyd – fresh from her Best Newcomer nomination at the Fringe awards for her solo work – as everything. They know how to work together for the laughs, without vanishing into sketch troupe mush: a sketch on returning drunks that takes an unexpected turn gives them all clear laughs of their own. And their timing and reactions are absolutely spotless: what could easily have been a non-sketch about how daytime TV presenters introduce their guests was made into one of the show highlights by Lloyd and Gareth Kane's silent expressions to Harvey's speech.

There are definitely well-written sketches here, too: they appear at first glance to be old staples, from shopping channels to crime dramas, but every one has something fresh in it. 

The one sketch that doesn't quite manage to do that is a needlessly recurring sketch about online paedophiles. It's not very funny to begin with (NOTE TO ALL COMEDIANS: no-one under the age of 40 has ever written 'l8' in a message) and its constant reprise seems like the work of a lesser sketch troupe.

But that's one vague dud in an hour of otherwise flawless comedy that whipped by so fast, we assumed they'd early. We're looking forward to what Men of War do next. That just hopefully won't include them finding their work quite so funny.

Men of War at the Pleasance Courtyard until Sunday, but tickets here