Review by Steve Bennett

Alan Carr never lets his geeky librarian looks stand in the way of the glitz and glam he adores, prancing on stage with a physical showbiz style that would put a Broadway showgirl to shame.

The reality, of course, is more prosaic, in keeping with his bookish appearance. He once worked in Tesco and is still employed at in a call centre, which he obviously finds mind-numbingly tedious.

Carr then recounts his travels across the country in search of an escape through stand-up - not London, mind, for fear of terrorist attacks. This was amusing enough, but Carr seemed nervous and at times lost in a venue that seemed to big for him.

Things when further awry when he picked an unwilling audience victim up to chime the gongs during a spoof News At Ten piece. The man was hostile and replaced - by popular demand - with a more amenable individual. But the incident had taken its toll on Carr's confidence and he begun to flounder.

From then on, he struggled to get the momentum back, but the showbiz spell had been broken. A chance you take with audience participation.

He recovered by returning to the comfort zone of childhood stories, and anecdotes his flatmate Monica, pierced in various "ladyplaces", but with limited success.

In a last-ditch attempts to breathe more life into the final part of the show, he swanned around the stage in the most clichéd of camp styles, asking the audience:" Do you still love Alan Carr?" The answer: "Probably not as much as he loves himself."

Review date: 1 Jan 2003
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett