Original Review:

Show Rating:

At heart, Nige is little more than the stereotypical Scouse scally; a jobless, lazy, dope-smoking loser, who inhabits a world of teenage mothers, shady pals and no-hope indie bands.

But it's a world Keith Carter brings evocatively to life with this spot-on creation, as he chats about his bezzie mate Dogshit Barry (so named because he's everywhere Nige goes), his afflicted family and his drop-out pals in the band The Strange Lumps.

It's a detailed picture he paints - just right for a Radio 4 sitcom, though then you would miss the visual impact of a character with the perfect look, from h his heavy-hooded eyes and thousand-yard stare to his incessant nervous itching.

But while the scenario is kitchen-sink real, Carter insists on breaking the illusion with daftly surreal flights of fancy; all well and good but they jar with the naturalistic feel of the whole.

Some of the tales of alien abduction, talking cysts on his sister's back and the pal who turned into a giant testicle could, at a stretch, be explained by Nige's drug-fuelled paranoia, but the show would work much better if, in the vernacular, he kept it real.

The witty monologue is punctuated by a handful of songs, from a deliciously sick birthday greeting to his gran, full of diseased and dying children, to the trite, but wonderfully-titled lament Why Does My Towel Smell Of Your Arse?

Cigs And Drugs And Rock n Roll may be an imperfect show, but Carter's creation is a real joy, who we can expect to see a lot more of. Nice one, Nige.