Skip to main content
An excellent night of alternative comedy
'We’re a long way from Live At The Apollo and interchangeable telly panel shows here, and I mean that in the best possible way,' writes JAMES WALSH
BBC EAT YOUR HEART OUT! The winner of the competition, Sam Eley, performed as Basil Crumbwick, in a giant papier-maché head [Author supplied]

Sketch Off Final
Leicester Square Festival, London

 

DESPITE the crisis in the arts, Britain has a never-ending supply of fresh weirdos. Some come straight from their university improv clubs, and some are doing their recovery in public after a year of being brutalised at infamous French clowning school Gaulier.

And some are here because their anarchic spirit allows them to belong nowhere else.

And many end up in the heats of Sketch Off, a competition dominated by character comedians, with the odd sketch act who surprise everyone by actually winning on occasion, like last year’s Burger + a Pint, who reprise their joyously stupid skits here while the judges make up their minds.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Dr Freud
Theatre review / 16 September 2025
16 September 2025

JAN WOOLF is beguiled by the tempting notion that Freud psychoanalysed Hitler in a comedy that explores the vulnerability of a damaged individual

PARADISIC: End of the Road festival 2025 ' Pic: Stewart Lee
Culture / 3 September 2025
3 September 2025

TOM STONE sings the praises of one of the oldest open-air festivals in Britain

stars
Theatre review / 14 July 2025
14 July 2025

MARY CONWAY applauds the success of Beth Steel’s bitter-sweet state-of-the-nation play

moon
Theatre review / 27 June 2025
27 June 2025

MARY CONWAY revels in the Irish American language and dense melancholy of O’Neill’s last and little-known play