Checkley and Bush's Comedy Riot

Less a comedy riot than a comedy late night punch-up between two drunks outside a kebab shop, London duo Laura Checkley and Victoria Bush don’t want for unusual ideas when it comes to sketch-writing – just the ability to come up with a half way decent punchline. A punchline that’s inherent rubbishness they will more often than not attempt to disguise in the delivery by shouting it at ear-drum nuking volume, probably in combination with an unfortunate facial contortion and some bad dancing.

Topped and tailed with two comedy karaoke numbers—the former a groansomely predictable reworking of ‘I Predict A Riot’ and the latter a take on Rihanna’s ‘S&M’ transformed into a song about a certain upscale supermarket with groansome predictability—this is a show intended to stir up a lairy, dignity-be-damned party vibe. Which goes some way to explain, if not excuse, the obnoxiously loud volume at which so much of their material is delivered.

A decent setup where Bush plays a leather jacket wearing hard nut Martina Cole fan goes nowhere, and is interspersed with various explosions of painful shouting. A horrible piece about a snobbish palsy sufferer stuck in a broken down car with a silently-suffering friend somehow manages to work in its fair share of shouting despite one character being a mute. Shouting is basically the entire gag in a hideous sketch about a six year-old hick beauty pageant queen. Bush even has to change microphone at one stage, presumably because the first one was done in by all the shouting.