JULIAN CLARY is charm incarnate. His demure manner, soothing sighs,

and flirtatious smiles made him the ideal host for this glitzy night of

high campery, which would have been a classic evening had it not taken

place in an uncomfortable, outsize, freezing cold, joyless tent.

His first guest was Hattie Hayridge; the concession to conventional

stand-up. She mimes the same scene that she has been miming for years --

bemused whinger cum flippant flake -- but her persona has been refined.

The themes, alas, remain rather hackneyed.

There is nothing hackneyed about Bob Downe, the ''prince of

polyester''. He is a one-off. At least half the audience couldn't see

his wildly animated expressions but the karaoke sequences were the

highlight. The pathos of a blissfully tasteless show-off desperately

capitalising on his 15 minutes is enough to make you cringe. The beauty

of Downe's act is its strange warm-heartedness. Catalogue culture,

daytime television, and even hairdressers get filtered through a skew

lens which somehow celebrates the grotesquerie and hysteria lurking

beneath everyday banality. Compulsive, beguiling, and ingenious.

Lili Savage plumps for tack. The bitchy Birkenhead transvestite is

bitter and bored with her lower-class life and she is out to snarl about

it. In spangly disco clobber that was never anything but naff, she

knowingly sent up the aspirations and disillusionment of anyone who has

ever been burdened with a lust for life in miserable circumstances.

Clary's in-betweeny bits were the highlights. A natural, gorgeous star

who can get a raucous laugh out of the mere mention of the word

''behind'' has to be unbeatable, especially since double-entendre is

about all he does. Quite amazing when you think about it.