Poof Loose

Stephen de Martin is one quarter of the less than amusing comedy group, Four Poofs and a Piano from Friday night with Jonathan Ross. But while a good voice and a cheeky smile might suffice to welcome the great and the good to a TV studio it cannot retain the attention of reasonably intelligent people for an entire hour.

Only those with the blackest sense of humour could laugh at the tragic sight of a man belting out slightly altered show classics to an audience of twelve in a venue which is supposed to hold close to a hundred. He smiles desperately at each audience member individually and attempts to wow the crowd with revelations about the fact that he is gay. Just when the songs and vaguely jokey intermissions about being gay seem to get boring he hits upon another comedy goldmine: he is gay and Australian. This gives him the chance to put on a sparkly hat with dangling corks and sing "Waltzing Matilda". He wonders what it would be like if he were paid to entertain the troops and dons a military jacket to sing "I want to be in Afghanistan." In between he moans about how hard it is to be gay.

De Martin is evidently a talented man with a stunning voice but that voice would be far better used in the service of a West End show than in front of people who have invested ten pounds of their wages in the mistaken belief that they would see some comedy.