Milo McCabe: Troy Hawke

The latest creation of talented character comic, presenter, and one-time musician Milo McCabe resonates somwhere between Michael Palin's Ripping Yarns and perhaps a younger incarnation of The Fast Show's Rowley Birkin QC.

Louche, loquacious, drenched in puns, similes and metaphors, Hawke's matinée idol persona is instantly engaging and he wraps us around his fingers with his wordplay, whenever his fingers are not already busy holding what looks like an ostrich feather.

Hawke reveals his dysfunctional, but privileged, childhood and how his father died at the hands of a real matinée idol, David Niven, in the most ludicrous way. So far, so surreally good.

The central thrust of Hawke's time with us is to grapple with the absence of adversity in the life of the average middle class chap. A fair point, but the quest that ensues to find a meaningful struggle tests Hawke's durability to the maximum.

Jaunting from terrorist-in-training, to men's rights campaigner, to trainee racist—all assisted by the Mr Men characters—Hawke takes on elements of Geoffrey Palmer's reactionary character, major Harry Truscott, in David Nobb's sitcom Fairly Secret Army.

These flights of fancy stretch Hawke each time. The necessary prefacing to each scrape limits the verbal flourishes previously in evidence, and you start to question if the character was ever meant to to carry an hour.

A less fragmented, ripping yarn, might have suited this creation better. But even with its narrative foibles this is an intriguing and funny hour.