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.
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