Julian Clary: Lord of the Mince Review

Something terrible has happened. The erudite, witty, loquacious contestant on Radio 4's long-running Just a Minute has been kidnapped. It's surely not him performing tonight, at least.

Ostensibly, Lord of the Mince consists of an hour-long ramble through material picked solely on the basis of its potential for crass double entendre or smutty innuendo. Of course, this is Clary's usual currency, and isn't a problem in itself – save, that is, for the wholesale absence of inventiveness anywhere along the road. Apparently he's named his dog "Jissm", so precipitating jokes about "Jissm flying through the kitchen serving-hatch," and so on.

Cum jokes, it seems have only so much staying power – initial hoots of outrage aren't really sustained, and the mining of every line for nuggets of rudeness becomes exhausting, only ever really digging up fool's gold. Slight redemption could be found, perhaps, in his proficiency as an entertainer. In fact, tonight he gives an incredibly shaky performance, forgetting his lines at one point. "I think I got away with that one," he camply suggests. It's a valiant attempt, but he didn't.

Worse still, a bizarre set-piece involving mind reading is shambolic. Not hilariously shambolic, just shambolic, wearing a 20-minute hole in the set that is sparsely populated with laughs. On TV and radio, perhaps, Clary has to work a little harder to wheedle innuendo out of broadcastable content. The less constrained stand-up format, however, adds nothing to his shtick. And, in momentary lapses in enthusiasm, one can't help but feel that the impostor knows this, too.

Read Becca Pottinger's review of Julian Clary: Lord of the Mince