★★★★★

ONCE upon a time, before mobile telephones and the internet, there was the Home Service or Radio Four.

Families gathered around Bakelite sets in their living rooms to listen to wonderfully funny comedy shows. One of the best was Round the Horne, described by the show’s eponymous leader Kenneth Horne as “something for those warm in the heart and soft in the head”.

Originally written by Barry Took and Marty Feldman, it has been restored to the stage by Tim Astley for the Apollo Theatre Company who made a wonderful fist of recreating the daft characters and surreal situations for a 50th anniversary tour.

Appearing at The Barn theatre were Colin Elmer as Kenneth Williams, Julian Howard McDowell as Kenneth Horne, Alex Scott Fairley as Hugh Paddick, Nick Wymer as Douglas Smith and Eve Winters as Betty Marsden. Everyone flourished, with comedy accents ranging from Irish to nasally camp.

The jokes, gleefully, were worse than those in Christmas crackers; a pair of teeth is something drunk in a French café, and moles on your hip are clearly just hibernating and will do no harm.

It was hilariously silly and reminded us that they don’t make em like that any more. Pity.