Review by Steve Bennett

Rufus Hound has to be extra-careful at a family-friendly festival such as this, issuing an unequivocal warning early in his set that even though he stars in a kids’ TV show, the ensuing performance is wholly unsuitable for youngsters, however broad-minded the parents. The fact he’s had his face painted probably isn’t helping his argument, though.

‘The thing is,’ says the star of CBBC’s Hounded, ‘I quite like working on children’s TV, and the only way can continue to do that is if no one complains. I know what happens to Jonathan Ross.’

Initially, parents may wonder what the fuss is about, as Hound describes how men communicate through the all-purpose clarion call ‘way-hay’ before launching into his atheist arguments, which may follow a very familiar train of thought but are given emphasis by his slow and deliberate, Stewart Lee-style repetition of the key phrases.

Sticking to the theme of ‘things Professor Richard Dawkins knows quite a lot about about’, Hound moves on to evolutionary biology. But all this is in support of his powerful panacea; the answer to all mankind’s troubles for which there is a strong evolutionary drive: more blow jobs. That’s why the kids were asked to leave the tent as he drives home the message time and time again, sometimes quite graphically.

It’s a routine he admits was forged in the heat of rowdy gigs full of stags and office parties, more than something designed for the genteel Latitude comedy tent. But the repetition that is the joke, more than the actual words he says, still has the audience transfixed. It isn’t what you say, it’s the way you say it…

Review date: 25 Jul 2010
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett