Last updated 12:08, Monday, 02 June 2008

Paul Merton’s Improv Chums, Sands Centre, Carlisle. Right, you’ve got... one famous comedian, presenter, writer and Have I Got News For You panellist.

Paul Merton

Accompanied by... four friends from The Comedy Store... in Carlisle’s biggest entertainment venue. And the stars have got to entertain 1,400-odd people for two hours using only... their razor-sharp wit and years of experience.

Does this sounds like a recipe for disaster? An event that’d fall as flat on its face as Ricky Tomlinson’s appearance in February? Maybe these fears were the reason the Sands wasn’t 100 per cent sold out.

Paul Merton, Lee Simpson, Mike McShane, Richard Vranch and Suki Webster (all London Comedy Store Players) more than proved the doubters wrong. It’s a format that relies on their collective and individual lightning reactions and ability to think at a thousand miles an hour, as well as their years of working together.

The show is truly a unique experience: different from every other night on the tour. Each sketch is inspired by what the audience suggests. It’s what the ‘chums’ do with it that’s so great. A quickfire sketch in which the audience have to shout ‘Die!’ if one of them fluffs their piece – here involving a household object (a kettle) and cartoon characters (Popeye and Mickey Mouse) – led to impersonations of Bruce Forsyth and (of course) Paul Merton’s Have I Got News For You rival Ian Hislop.

Even the Cumbrian audience’s surreal suggestions – such as ‘Two goldfish plan a wedding’, ‘An artificial inseminator asks his fiancee’s father for her hand in marriage’ and ‘Rampant vicar’ – barely phased them, although ‘Sellafield blows up’ did sum up, as Paul Merton ironically put it, ‘the evening of whimsical comedy’.

Performed in the style of movies, from film noir to sci-fi soap, musicals, mime and OTT Shakespeare (‘The Flaming of the Shrew’) it’s the stars’ speed, the nonstop brilliance (even moments of genius) that draws gasps, as well as the weird and wonderful places the sketches take them to. Magic.

KATE REES