Review by Steve Bennett

With professional jingle-writer Tom Hodge at the organ-piano and leaping around selling his life experiences with computer drawings and sound and video recordings, this is a very entertaining hour of anecdote and insight into a hack tunesmith's heart.

Young, bright-eyed and Jetson-hairstyled, Tom is a great salesman who starts off demonstrating how to play music to a Charlie Chaplin clip, then demystifies ad jingles and 'soundscapes' past and present with  copious autobiographical snippets revealing the art of his composition and the farts of his commissioners.

Justin Hawkins of The Darkness, he tells us, wrote: ‘Washing machines last  longer with Calgon’ and Lou Reed wrote soundalike songs for 'production music' publishers.

It is a fascinating and entertaining hour-long show. You couldn't   claim it was comedy as such. You couldn't say it was a well-structured script building to a massive climactic pay-off. But fascinating and entertaining will do to justify the price of admission.

Review date: 1 Jan 2005
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett