Is there anything more English upper middle class, for better and worse, than the radio light comedy? It’s the aural Ocado van on a gravel drive of a Mock Tudor mansion.
Worryingly my first taste of John Finnemore (I know I’m very late to the party) initially evokes the worst as smug, pseudo-smart sketches about Pavlov (which relies on the not hilarious similarity of Mrs Pavlova to a tasty dessert) and Socrates fail to hit the mark. Five performers with mics and little backdrop or props, feel like the recording of a radio show and I want to turn the dial.
But John Finnemore didn’t secure series after series of Radio 4 shows by pedalling Monty Python-lite and soon hits his stride with a nice two-hander on the age-old torture of an ageing relative telling an excruciatingly long tale of very little.
Soon top-quality flights of fantasy and imagination follow with regularity. Big laughs are found with an intervention for Winnie the Pooh’s honey abuse, a sketch on how product designers came up with the world’s animals and an interview with the man who paints slightly-off Disney characters on the sides of ice cream vans.
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