Review by Steve Bennett

It's hard to make notes on Michael's show when he's marked you for attention and keeps coming back to it, soliciting stars for a review that he says his great grandchildren will be able to Ask Jeeves about. I'm not to call him plump, nor compare him with a public schoolboy, nor comment on the shirt and I certainly shouldn't mention he seems to be wearing Hugh Grant's hair. I was deeply unamused to be included in the show, as I imagine was the woman whose handbag he confiscated and unfortunate front row Rocco. However setting the aside the anxiety of anticipating the next remark, I laughed like a drain at throughout.

The styling 'An Evening with ' has long been the preserve of comedians of status and track record ­ Dame Edna, Kenneth Williams, Joan Rivers and the like, so it seems a bit cocky to claim it for your own show. But that's what he is, smart, extremely sure of himself and confident in his ability to capitalise on whatever comes his way, whether it's latecomers or the latest hint of terrorism striking Britain. The only hint of nerves was his initial pedantic, over enunciation like Professor Higgins on coke, but then he relaxed back into his normal blazingly posh and had the audience eating out of his hand.

Michael can get comic mileage out of a single word, he gets a lot of wear out of the presumed Scots antipathy towards the English, he has a fair command of accents, even if the working class people he portrays are all shrill and idiotic. Tonight's show had covered some fairly ordinary subjects ­ property programmes, driver's signs, the inanities of telephone etiquette, supermarket interactions, but he makes it his own and gives a surefooted performance that guarantees you will trust him to be funny wherever the fancy takes him. This really is damn good stand up without a dull moment

Julia Chamberlain

Review date: 1 Jan 2006
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett