ScotsGay Magazine

**

Along with Spitting Image, Ben Elton on the Friday Night and Saturday Live Channel Four shows helped inform my politics in the 80’s. Satire was cool. Alternative comedy was in full flow. Ben Elton the Stand Up, despite some dodgy diction, could do no wrong. Then came the chat shows and the West End musicals. Then came New Labour, and the line, “I’m not doing left politics anymore. New Labour don’t bother, so why should I?”

So any show satirising Ben Elton should have been worth seeing.

Dan Thomas doesn’t impersonate Ben Elton very well, but that isn’t the problem. The script it turgid and unfunny, almost painfully so. Actually it’s awful. So bad that I broke my own rule and walked out after fifteen minutes. It gets two stars in the hope it improved after I left, but I doubt it.

Martin Walker

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