Review: Little Britain Live, Leeds Grand Theatre, until December 2, sold out.

10:15am Thursday 30th November 2006

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THIS is the quickest-selling comedy tour of all time in big Britain: Affirmation that maybe live comedy really was the new rock'n'roll after all.

David Walliams and Matt Lucas, plus a couple of stooges and the stentorian recorded voice of Tom Baker, have been on the road on and off since October last year, playing the equivalent of a greatest hits tour of all their favourite eccentrics.

By now, the material must be as well-grooved as the tramlines on furniture speeds on and off with the brisk efficiency lacking from the equally silly, but enervated transfer from the telly, The Two Faces Of Mitchell And Webb at the Grand Opera House last month.

The tour has one week to go after the sold-out Leeds run, and a demob-happy mood is already setting in, although the first half holds the party pranks in check.

To the accompaniment of an ever-changing British landscape, the deliciously plummy, yet deadpan tones of Baker introduce each vignette, opening with two of the big hitters from Walliams and Lucas's coterie of grotesques: Lou and Andy.

I won't spoil Lucas's entrance; let's just say he hits the heights before slumping in his wheelchair.

Sketches are mostly short, not always sharp and never shocking but certainly close to the bone.

Wherever and whenever possible, each routine is designed to lead to the familiar catchphrase, be it Lucas's obnoxious stage hypnotist, Kenny Craig, demanding that you look into his eyes, or Walliams's holiday company grump delighting in saying "Computer says No".

Live, the duo can go further than on TV: Lucas stretches Vicky Pollard - with her six children by seven different men - almost as much as her Lycra, turning her "Yeah But No But" Pavlovian reaction into an extended vocal exercise.

The cake-vomiting women at the village fete have their chunder-thunder moment, and post-interval the show goes into overdrive in its gay joshing, turning into the campest of pantomime frolics with bawdy audience participation that stays just the humorous side of cruel.

However, impetus is lost with improvised diversions and an obsession with back passages.

Time to release Lucas's Dafydd, the only gay in the village, to belt out a disco anthem for his Welsh Village People.