Stephen K Amos joins the chat show brigade, setting out his sofa in the Teviot Ballroom.
It's hard to review chat shows as there's such a reliance on each evening's guests. The night I saw scored evenly on hits and misses, but was all nicely held together by Stephen K Amos.
It started badly before Amos even came on stage with a strange Cabaret Noir appearance from an artist called Mikelangelo who, in an attempt to warm up the audience, sang to us in a husky baritone whilst plucking away on his guitar. You could sense the feeling of WTF? in the room until Stephen came bounding onto the stage and brought the mood back to where it should be for an evening of laughter.
After that, you get the usual bits of Amos's patter skilfully picking on and playing with the audience. It's a late show, running past midnight so you're pretty much guaranteed to have at least one pissed-up heckler for Stephen to verbally knock around (and he did).
Stephen's first 'proper' on the sofa guest was Justin Moorhouse, another stand-up who did a very competent 10 minutes of back-and-forth banter including a few gags from his set.
Then someone let Mikelangelo loose again, this time joined by Undine Francesca (you can see them - if you want to - in a show called The Honeymoon Suite) for another mad song, after which we came to Scotland's own Tommy Sheridan ex-MSP and winner of a large libel case against the Murdoch press.
Call me old-fashioned, but unless you're just laughing AT Sheridan, he doesn't really have a place in a show who's prime purpose was to make us smile, and this was another weak section of the show. Amos did what he could to hold it all together, without resorting to taking the mickey out of Sheridan (who after all is noted for suing people).
Amos redeemed himself with his next choice of guest bringing on the Soweto Gospel Choir (yes, all 26 of them) for a couple of glorious musical numbers (we'll forgive Stephen's dodgy attempt at dancing along, as he seemed to be having so much fun).
Then a bit more closing banter, and yet another execrable number from the Honeymoon Suite songsmiths, and we were out of there.
You pays your money and you takes your chance as far as the guests go. Ask the box-office who's on if you're thinking of dropping in, and make a call based on that. If you're not sure, give Stephen K Amos the doubt anyway as he's a great comic you might even get 2-for-1 tickets if you ask nicely.
