REVIEW: Fame: Not The Musical

FIVE STARS

FAME. What is it and is it really all it's cracked up to be?

Someone well placed to spill the beans is comedian and writer David Baddiel. Thanks to a career which has spanned 20 plus years, he's seen the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to being famous.

And now, coming back to stand up after a hiaitus of about 15 years he's ready to tell all thanks to his show Fame: Not The Musical.

In fact it's not really so much a stand up show than a chat with the audience, punctuated with screen shots of his family or his own public embarrasment and blunders of one sort or another.

Throughout, he explains what fame is and means to him, how it's impacted on his work and his family, how he still gets mistaken for Ian Broudie of pop band the Lightning Seeds, Ben Elton and Alan Yentob even after all this time and what it's taught him over the years.

A fair amount of the show is taken up by exploring the relationship David has with people - those who he knows, and those he doesn't.

And unsurprisingly Twitter gets more than a passing mention with David talking about how it has allowed people from all over the world to contact him at any time of the day and night about anything and how he deals with the trolls of which there are many.

Before the interval he asks for the audience to tweet him and promises to read out a few in the second half - my tweet generated a big laugh.

But the whole show is absolutely hilarious - with some of the biggest laughs being gained by his own public humilation on TV shows, meeting Madonna, being mistaken for other people and his enounters with some of his own idols - Peter Gabriel to name but one.

It also showed that despite the passage of time, he's lost none of the fantastic, intelligent and well observed wit that made him famous in the first place.

Fame: Not The Musical is on at the Menier Chocolate Factory until May 23. Tickets from £21. Visit www.menierchocolatefactory.com or call the box office on 020 7378 1713.