Reeves & Mortimer Reviewed

[singlepic=47,320,240,,right]  It’s about time they were back, and although The Independent doesn’t think much of Vic and Bob’s brand of comedy, from the details of their politics-free show (I’d rather they were politics free than ski-holidaying their way through man-made global warming propaganda without being in control of the facts) it would seem that they are definitely Back On Form:

Tonight, the main raiding of the character cupboard was a reprisal for the odd folk duo Mulligan and O’Hare from The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer.

The croonsome twosome had taken over editorial duties at Heat magazine, and their particular spin on celebrity obsession was to spot celebrities shopping at hardware or furniture stores, and so seeing “Jennifer Aniston outside Carpet (Tick) Right” was high on their news agenda. The speculation on whom she might be buying the carpet for was their ludicrous take on celebrity obsession and it was as close to social comment as it gets from a pair rightly accused of heralding the de-politicisation of comedy in the Nineties and signalling catchphrase culture for scores of apolitical students to hide behind.

The plus side of Vic and Bob was the idea that they had somehow re-invented the tradition of British variety. Of course, they had to kill it first, and Bob Mortimer’s joke tonight: “Do you remember those two terrible Winters we had? Mike and Bernie” is a suitable admission of guilt and, ironically, a rare moment of actual material. It’s not that they can’t write gags (Vic Reeves, after all, is the owner of “bird flu, man walk”), but when they do use them they are like get-out-of-jail-free cards to vindicate the vacuum that has gone before rather than added value to a sketch.

Amid the rest of the goofing around is a sketch about Bob bringing his letter-box contraption to heat up cold mail to Dragons’ Den and trying to convince Vic’s pipe-smoking Duncan Bannatyne of its virtues, and a riff on plastic surgery using potatoes and cakes: “I learnt it from the Nip/Tuck manual,” says Vic, now a qualified surgeon.

Of course, I don’t suppose reviewer Julian Hall has ever been up north.