"Fifty minutes in the company of these guys and I'm overwhelmed.
"Mind you, I shouldn't be. I mean hell, just look at who you got: two-thirds of the manically creative 'Trap' trio, the whole lotta the 'Congress of Oddities' Victorian-style freak show, plus - ahem - Carol Vorderman's 'Sudoku Live' warm-up act to boot. Sound like fun?
"Well it is. Breathlessly so.
"'Cause the proceedings - introduced by canny, cloak-clad Avis Sherman (actually multi-talented stand-up Michael Legge) - can't really be described. The closest I can get is Twilight Zone meets Eddie Izzard meets tragically-underrated Scots sketch fest 'Absolutely'. With a bit of Macbeth, CNN news and Viz thrown in. And Spike Milligan directing.
"But ultimately, comparisons would be reductive. Check incorporeal madwoman Zoe Gardner, the all-too-British ghost... Sassy Margaret Cabourn-Smith, the all-too-Hollywood heroine... Perky Paul Litchfield, one minute Hammer House herald, the next John Inman juvenile... And of course Jeremy Limb, both puerile prankster and nice-but-dim ninny. It's an explosive mix with an explosive script and explosive directing, and if you ain't laughing yourself stoopid within the first five minutes you're probably Anne Diamond.
"Okay, there are - in the tradition of said Spike - moments of unease. There's a fine line between in-yer-face fun and what-the-hell's-going-on weirdness. But it's a line Monty Python tread and they got away with it and so should these. Especially when they got an insulting time machine, a BBC News vid...
"And a whole audience in hysterics."
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