Comedian Harry Hill’s madcap infectious humour makes ‘I Can’t Sing’ at the London Palladium a delightfully entertaining laugh-out-loud spoof musical. As Simon Cowell would say, I didn’t like it, I loved it.

Hill’s script does a fantastic job sending up TV talent contest The X Factor - in particular Cowell and fellow judges Cheryl Cole and Louis Walsh.
 

Most of the music and lyrics by Steve Brown are also witty, vibrant and zany without reaching show-stopping status.
 

Cowell’s decision to partly finance a satire that pokes fun at himself suggests he saw the pound signs flashing as he eyed another hit – but it would have been less of a gamble if the show had been staged when X Factor was enjoying its biggest viewing figures.
 

The whole of X Factor is deliciously parodied, including too-slick compare Liam O'Deary and the contestants’ sob stories.
 

You couldn’t get much more over-the-top than having a heroine called Chenice living in a caravan under a flyover with a grandfather iwith an iron lung.

Well actually you could, because one of the X Factor wannabes is a hunchback swinging from a bell-rope.
 

Chenice is appealingly played by gifted vocalist Cynthia Erivo, whose top-note finish to ‘I Can't Sing’ is electrifying.

After convincing her that she can indeed sing, ukele-playing plumber Max [Alan Morrissey] persuades her to compete with him on the talent show against thinly-disguised versions of Jedward, Wagner and ‘Tesco’ Mary.

Nigel Harman perfectly captures the egotistic pop mogul, who is beseeched by the lame and the blind to perform miracles after he descends, Messiah-fashion, on a cloud in the catchy routine ‘Please Simon’.
 

Simon Bailey splendidly lampoons the renamed Dermot O’Leary, while Victoria Elliott and Ashley Knight undermine the other judges.

But Simon Lipkin, operating talking dog Barlow who delivers some great put-downs, and Charlie Baker, as the hunchback, almost steal the show.
 

Director Sean Foley clearly subscribes to the notion that bad taste is acceptable if it’s funny.