From a guide to brothels which fixated on parking facilities to a Mills And Boon take on the microwave meal, the real stars of Thursday's show were the obsessively collected and haphazardly piled books.

A hip hit on the London scene, The Book Club is like Vic Reeves' Big Night Out with a Thesaurus. And host Robin Ince set the standard, forcing an unholy union between his reading of the lighthouse romance Stormy Vigil and a backing tape of Thomas Tallis.

The best acts were those who embraced and subverted the literary theme one gave a rundown of the classics with the help of an acoustic guitar and rutting toy sheep.

"Actually, that might be conjecture," he said of the re-enactment of Proust's La Recherche Du Temps Perdu. "I can't pretend I've read that one."

A "Sex Off" between Ince, Asher Treleven and passages of the corniest prose imaginable was wine-spittingly funny, but best received was Chris Neil who, despite looking rather like Mole from The Wind In The Willows, introduced us to "the twilight world of the 'omosexual" with handy expressions from The Gay Phrase Book and crushingly prosaic extracts from the autobiography of Jodie Marsh.

"My friend suggested I take up reading," he joked. "I told 'em, no need: Kylie's on the mend and she'll have a new album out soon."