EVER wondered what it would have been like to sit in on a recording of Sixties comedy radio classic, Round the Horne?

I imagine that’s what the producers of this stage show thought and then pinched themselves when they realised nobody else had thought of it.

Thanks to them, that’s what a packed audience at the Mercury Theatre, in Colchester, experienced last week and after two hours of cordwangles, bona prods and I know, you know, you knows, we all left with huge smiles on our faces, much like the audiences 40 years ago.

This latest incarnation of the show has no Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden and Kenneth Horne, of course, but there are some jolly good actors taking their places performing the myriad of characters made famous by the series.

These include Rambling Syd Rumpo, who sings folk songs with a unique lyrical content, Dame Celia Molestrangler and Binkie Huckaback, who hilariously sends up the theatrical dramas of the thirties and Forties and Julian and Sandy, the out of work actors who famously use camp innuendo and the gay slang to brilliant comic effect.

For those not in the know I suppose you could say it’s the Fast Show of the Sixties, except much, much funnier.

NEIL D’ARCY-JONES