Review by Steve Bennett

The danger with some titles is that they do only too clearly describe  the show itself.  Hand Relief is, indeed, a wank.

This show gives new meaning to the word puerile - the new meaning being somewhere in area of derivative, Third Form, pointless and depressingly old-fashioned.

This is almost 60 whole minutes of pre-teen knob jokes, rip-offs of Terry Jones playing a woman in Monty Python, Victoria Wood's Coronation Street voices and much less besides.

I perked up when a voice announced the arrival of The Mime Minister.  Something witty linking a voiceless Blair to some original comedy?

Alas no.  One of the cast miming the actions of a man opening an umbrella in the rain. Later, he comes back and - with no tongue in no cheek - mimes a sheet of glass.

It is as if they though what they saw when they they were at school that they thought was funny, and then simply copied it.

My advice is that they need to think how to change, twist, turn and re-envisage those things or  - hey - even do our their thing created in our their minds.

The elements of this show were barely funny on 1934 radio and in the  1956 school playground. They are certainly painlessly unfunny in 2005.

A lot of blood, sweat, tears and hard hard work was, I'm sure, put into this show. Hitler also put a lot of work into the invasion of Russia. But got more laughs.

Review date: 1 Jan 2005
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett