Hour of Telly: Live!

With similar bone structure and hair scraped back in ponytails, Zoe Gardner and Margaret Cabourn-Smith are almost indistinguishable, and by the end of the show they start to resemble mischievous twins intent on frittering an hour of your time. It’s gratifying to see them empty bottles of water over themselves in a hackneyed training montage as they cram issues of TV Choice for their live "charity" telethon.

Ingeniously, Gardner and Cabourn-Smith pretend that the show is meant to be shambles, to cover up that it is exactly that. The cunning of this scheme doesn't make it any less cynical – regardless of the nominal ticket price. The same can also be said for mimicking the persona of a fame hungry West End would-be who exploits any opportunity to showcase their talent when this is the true intention. Cabourn does have a powerful and very impressive voice but being subjected to it unbilled in the rather poky confines of the venue proves overbearing.

The words of an agent aren’t hard to imagine: "put together a little something for the Free Fringe. It’ll it improve your public profile and you never know who’ll be in the audience. Wink wink." The pair go through the motions, if energetically, of a sketch show but this does little to make up for poorly conceived jokes. Apparently ‘deconstructivist’ spoof advertisements for things you can’t buy such as ‘barbed comments’ don’t work if they lack observation. A real turn-off.