Their regular slot on the Johnathan Ross show goes a long way to explaining the largely heterosexual audience in tonight. The crowd are probably expecting a show of camp froth - and to a large extent that demand is satisfied by 4 Poofs and a Piano. But there's also material here about gay sex and colonics that pushes the envelope if you're conservative with a small 'c'. Dig deeper and you'll even find touching moment such as their ditty about the NTL man. Yes, er, that cable company.
But pandering to the straight audience seems to portray gay men as an end-of-the-pier freak show, and dumbing down the talent that we get occasional flashes of is an awful waste of their ability.
I'm confident that there's individual personality behind the cheesy smiles and Diamanté T-shirts, but they were suppressed behind a bland and confused format.
They're camp without the cleverness of Julian Clary, and amusing without the cheek of Graham Norton. If they could just rise above the stereotype, their show would be all the better for it.
