Back from London after seeing my son in Imperium (proud dad), I packed in nine shows into two days and already the cream is rising to the top and some images and themes remain, whilst others quietly slip away.
‘It’s sad, funny, riotous & clever’: A SOCKFUL OF CUSTARD – Pleasance Theatre
Whatever happens, or unhappens, whatever nuttiness and confusion you’re in for, you’ll experience something special in the Spike Milligan-inspired A Sockful of Custard from Jeremy Stockwell.
JEEPERS CREEPERS – Leicester Square Theatre
My parents loved Marty Feldman. Given I’m no spring chicken that tells you how far back into the recesses of black-and-white television you’d have to delve for the career and admittedly the brilliance of the bulging-eyed clown at the centre of Jeepers Creepers, who also wrote early sitcoms like Bootsie and Snudge. I had to watch in my Ladybird pyjamas because it was on after my bedtime.
THE PHANTOM RASPBERRY BLOWER – St James Studio
You’d really need to be Prince Charles to get the most out of this curio: or at least a septuagenarian devotee of the Goons and inveterate nostalgist for the era when BBC radio announcers wore dinner jackets. In case you don’t even know what the Goons were, they were the forerunners of every manic comedy programme since, from Monty Python to League of Gentlemen to Little Britain, pioneers who established that surreal and illogical sketches and oft-repeated catchphrases could make the kind of radio and later television people talked about at work the next day.