Review by Steve Bennett

As a newcomer to stand-up, Toby Whithouse has a noticeable lack of ambition to his set, from the very moment he takes to the stage and tells us, as so many acts insist on doing, what celebrity he vaguely resembles.

His over-polished set revolved around How Clean Is Your House, how backwards his home town is and how fat he used to be, including a tired old ‘…that was just the teacher’ bait and switch. Changing ‘teacher’ to ‘Ofsted inspector’ is fooling no one.

He’s been an actor for more than a decade, and his delivery seemed over-practised and unnatural. But occasionally he flashed a glint of genius: his gag about porn star names was inspired, and the logical extension of Scout camp was a lovely idea with heaps of potential, but the audience is likely to already be bored by the time he gets to this point.

Whithouse has written for Doctor Who and created the Channel 4 series No Angels, but he needs to apply the same creativity to his stand-up as he does to his drama.

Review date: 24 Aug 2007
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett