Review by Steve Bennett

What do you get if you cross the charm of Pam Ayres, the rhythmic rhyming brilliance of Eminem, the audience appeal of Victoria Wood and the polite Englishness of Joyce Grenfell? Jude Simpson, for whom the words 'comic performance poet' don't quite suffice.

Last year's Tut! Tut! Miss Simpson! showed her potential. This year she has realised it with an effortless intermingling of stage patter; verse that appeals to poetophobes; sophisticated comic jazz songs; and audience participation that actually enhances the show.

Simpson is an unlikely comedy performer. She is the UK slam poetry champion and former Private Secretary to Home Secretary David Blunkett. She has just been signed by Steve Coogan's Baby Cow Productions for a TV poetry show.

Physically active and rhythmic in her delivery, Simpson's range is broad: from an Earl Okin-style version of the classic Fever, pastiched as Femur, to the Secret Rapper, inspired by a stranger's incisive comment about her poetry: "It's hip-hop. But quite polite."

It's also funny.

Her song Let's Make A Baby is as good as anything Victoria Wood has ever written, but with more energy ­ as if ready for a bouncy Fifties Hollywood musical.

Jude's delivery is so distractingly strong that it sometimes masks the cleverness of her rhymes and the sophistication of her rhythms. It is no mean feat to come across as the girl next door, while being a sophisticated wordsmith and making her large audience laugh. Yet she managed it.

Whether there is a media market for so well-crafted an act in these dumbed-down days, I don't know. But if anyone can crack the populist market, she can. She even managed to persuade her fairly restrained Fringe audience to howl happily like wolves.

Review date: 1 Jan 2004
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett