Aliens Ate My Schnitzel

Sketch comedy is a genre that has transferred to the televisual medium with considerably more success than the more orthodox stand-up. It is not hard to see why. Sixty minutes of an individual addressing an audience was never as likely to preoccupy the quick-fix brigade to the same extent as colourful, rapid-fire bursts of character humour.

Aliens Ate My Schnitzel know this, and have one eye on the prize. They even have their own theme tune – a catchy, inane techno-cheese music video that captures the surrealism of their act nicely. It's not the only music video at their disposal either. Their fine raft of characters default to extravagant musical numbers with surprising regularity, although this is not unwelcome. Indeed, the magnificently pomp euro-disco finale is a personal festival highlight thus far.

The characters have as their binding thread an unpretentious obliviousness to their strangeness which is deeply appealing.The humour is good-natured to the extent that the show could almost be family orientated, were it not for the glam hyper-sexuality of some of their more outrageous creations. They're not shy about getting the audience involved either – one poor victim looked particularly galled as she was being mounted by sweaty air-head hairdresser Lammy in a bid to create a hair-style "in an artistic monument to the 2004 tsunami victims."

A fine melding of chaotic live comedy and charismatic character sketches, Aliens Ate My Schnitzel is an unpretentious island of light-hearted fun in a sea of Fringe artists trying to make very serious points. Ideal late-evening titillation.