Comedy news: News Revue at the Canal Cafe Theatre

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Should Prince Harry drop out of the army and run a Jersey children’s home? Newsrevue, held at the Canal Café Theatre in the heart of London’s Little Venice, seeks to answer this topical news question and more.

With its director and cast of two men and two women changing every few weeks, and weekly updated material from a number of different writers, Newsrevue has been providing punters with their regular fix of satire for nearly 30 years.

In tonight's performance the British monarchy were not the only ones to get a right royal send-up, as Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling fell victim to parody as General Melchett and the weedy Captain Darling.

Meanwhile on the other side of the fence, David Cameron as Oliver Hardy struggled to tutor Boris Johnson as a sexually depraved Stan Laurel, proclaiming “I want to put my dingle in her”.

Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan featured in his own Monty Python’s Life of Brian – ‘He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very average football manager.’

The comedy quartet interspersed the sketches with some excellently written songs – ‘Why don’t you come home sober, Amy?’ to the tune of Winehouse’s Valerie as one example. Within this format some of the more daring and relevant humour was allowed to bloom. A good response was met for the adaptation of children’s song

‘There were three in the bed and the little one said roll over’:

"There were three in the jail and Jack Straw said, “Bail Early, Bail Early”, So they gave bail early and one came out and knifed a prozzie and raped a scout.’

Unfortunately, the very format of the News Revue - four actors performing sketches by a multitude of individual writers - meant that not all of the show was of the same standard.

The sketch about the Spice Girls, singing about how they don’t like each other and only reformed for the money, failed to come up with a new angle and descended into wooden slapstick. Equally, tired jokes about Margaret Thatcher not having a heart dated material which is aiming to be at the cutting edge.

Ultimately the meal was like a Sunday dinner with huge slices of chickeny comedy greatness and crunchy roasties of lyrical wizardry, but with a small amount of crappy joke sprouts. Although if it really was a Sunday roast you could force feed the Brussels to the dog.

David Doyle