Review by Steve Bennett

If brevity is the soul of wit, Andy Zaltzman must be the unfunniest man alive. He never uses one word when 27 will do and his heaps parentheses inside subsidiary clauses like grammatical Russian dolls.

But what he lacks in pithiness, he more than makes up for in intelligence. And The Great Conspiracy turns out to be a typically bright, all-encompassing and strongly opinionated show from a comic back on form.

Of course, Zaltzman's verbiage is often the gag in itself - and it's certainly the trademark that marks him out as unique - but equally frequently it slows down the delivery of the punchline, and of the idea. At one point, I tried to tally the number of words in a typical sentence, but just couldn't keep up.

That's not to say he can't write with economy when he chooses; he puts the pun in political punditry with some deliciously stupid one-liners and his best jokes hit the point with devastating precision.

But more often he prefers the needlessly indirect approach. He's still good, but with a few more full stops he could easily be brilliant.

The topics are pretty much what you would expect from a left-leaning comic. It comes as no surprise that America's imperialism comes high on the list, but thankfully Zaltzman sees things others miss, bringing new insight, original jokes and a quirky approach to the comedy table.

His sharp mind is clearly a threat to the shady cartel of power-brokers who run the world, which is why they kidnapped him and replaced him with a scarecrow lookalike espousing a right-wing, capitalist agenda rather than Zaltzman's usual socialist approach. At least that's the premise with which the show starts, in suitably ridiculous style, with the audience staring at a stuffed dummy with a mixture of bewilderment and amusement.

Zaltzman's polemic is littered with similarly silly ideas sitting alongside the most unlikely analogies, some needlessly clumsy but the majority providing an inspired insight into his point of view. His previous, smug tendency for pretentiously obscure references has subsided - and now you can see exactly what he is getting at.

His admirable intelligence and rare political acumen serve the comedy well, ensuring the plentiful laughs are intrinsic to his impassioned rant, rather than an afterthought. Zaltzman may not have perfected his act yet, but this year it looks like he has taken an almighty leap in the right direction.

Review date: 1 Jan 2003
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett