David Vass reviews Around the Horne at the Diss Corn Hall

In the mid to late sixties, television was starting to dominate home entertainment.

Around the Horne, far from being part of the so-called swinging sixties, was effectively the last hurrah for radio comedy.

To modern sensibilities it can sound curiously old fashioned, notwithstanding the occasional flight of surreal fantasy – Baboon in the Hole, anyone? - which one might more readily associate with the Goons.

Recorded in front of a live audience at the Paris Theatre, deep in the bowels of Regent Street, it must have felt as if one had entered a private club to see Kenneth Horne supported by Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick and Betty Marsden, acting out the scripts of Barry Took and Marty Feldman.

Apollo Theatre Company set themselves the task of recreating that atmosphere, and while stage props and dressing do their part, this was largely due to an excellent cast.

Julian Howard McDowell does a fine job of replicating Horne's sonorous delivery, and squint and you'd be forgiven for thinking it was Kenneth Williams on stage, rather than Colin Elmer.

I'm not qualified to form a view on Eve Winters's or Hugh Paddick verisimilitude, but I'm guessing they were similarly accurate, while Callum Hale is spot on as just about any radio announcer from the 1960s.

The stand out moment was, of course, when Sandy and Julian took to the stage, which both Fairley and McDowell obviously hugely enjoyed.

Surely the inspiration for the Suits You segment of the Fast Show, the pair seemed to step outside of the show's format in a way that must have been naughty, bordering on brave, at a time when being gay was a criminal offence.

The Corn Hall audience cheered them on, along with the appearance of J. Peasmold Gruntfuttock and Rambling Syd Rumpo, who were both met with similar applause of recognition.

The jokes they dealt out deserved a heritage preservation order, eliciting Christmas cracker groans as much as laughs, but I really admired the company's refusal to poke fun at the show's dated material.

This was all about travelling back in time, without knowing irony or revisionism. As such I found it an education as much as an entertainment.