"Yeah but no but yeah but no but," begins Vicky Pollard. "Yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah," she continues, her voice slipping from Bristolian burr past London towards Jamaica and into a high-pitched sing song as she pushes herself off her stool and into a series of rhythmic high-kicks.
Undoubtedly, Little Britain creators Matt Lucas and David Walliams are here tonight to milk it. They are here to hammer home oft-repeated catchphrases and here to turn a tidy profit: the pair's earnings from this mammoth nine-month tour, its T-shirts, mousemats, dolls and books will reportedly make them very rich men.
Still, if you're after repetition of the familiar, the stage show does a fine job. Roars go up when moustachioed transvestite Emily Howard cycles on, when the apparently crippled Andy jetpacks into his wheelchair and when Dafydd insists that he is "the only gay in the village".
The performers bound from costume to costume, the streams of vomit flow perfectly, and almost every major character from the first two TV series is here, doing pretty much what they do on television. Two new characters - an incontinent women and a mail-order bride who looks less like her photo and more like Lucas in a PVC dress - fit snugly among more familiar routines.
This lack of innovation could lead to accusations that Walliams and Lucas are flogging what is at least an ailing horse. Most of the evening sees these two talented comics jumping through hoops of their own devising and polishing the Little Britain brand rather than taking it anywhere interesting. Thankfully their characters still appeal, not least because they are drawn with affection as much as scorn. Even Majorie Dawes, on particularly demonic form tonight, seems to be battling herself as much as her fat class.
It helps that Lucas and Walliams seem to be enjoying themselves as they slip from frock to fat suit and dick joke to minge joke, adding cheery ad-libs when a cue fails and bouncing about their roles with an addictive energy. If they're still having fun nine months down the line, this tour will seem less like a marketing move and more like a triumph.
· At Bournemouth International Centre until Sunday (box office: 0870 111 3000), and touring.
