When 'Britain's most ridiculous alcoholic' sets his heart on becoming a war poet, little does he realise that his poetry will kill as many people as the Vietnam War itself. We Are Klang is comprised of three stand-up comedians: Greg Davies - 'a very fat Rik Mayall' - Steve Hall - 'a poor man's David Baddiel' - and Marek Larwood - 'a homeless Matt Lucas...

We Are Klang's sell out Edinburgh show was nominated for an If.comedy (formerly Perrier) award and this spoof radio series was specially commissioned for BBC7. Here we hear some tall tales in these Amazing Lives...

The idea is simple: A spoof radio show for BBC Radio 7 that parodies the sort of serious retrospective look at the career of a misunderstood famous person that Radio 4 would churn out. Sadly, what must have sounded like a good idea when the trio got drunk in a pub and tried to come up with an idea for a series, just doesn't stretch into half-hour episodes. In fact they'd have been pushing to make five minute sketches out of each program.

The biggest problem is that this is just not funny. Three blokes talking total codswallop into a microphone in the hope that people will laugh, just isn't amusing to me. Nor is doing silly voices in a vain hope that the listener will laugh simply because you're doing a silly voice.

The episode Explorer started off promising, but then it did sound a little too much like Why Bother?: Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling in Conversation with Chris Morris - without the redeeming feature of actually being that funny. There's a terrible David Frost impression which sounds more like Ken Livingston. There is one original inspired moment (which revolves around the Blue Peter elephant) but it's milked way too much - they keep going for a few minutes after most listeners have gotten the gag, laughed, made a cup of tea and been to the toilet. This episode also closes with one of the oldest jokes on the planet. When talking about the release of their new book we are informed that it's available from all good book stores and "some rubbish ones."

The only funny (to me) episode was the rubbish comic Max Phantasmo, and this was only because of the irony of a bunch of poor comics performing a poor comedy about a poor comic.

Sadly, this is just not funny - and I'm a man who regularly banters with his old uni mates about the virtues of cheese, fish and jam!

3

Nick Smithson