TV is a dangerous thing, as Roald Dahl reminded us in his dark and nutty morality tale Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In the Oompa-Loompas' words: "It rots the sense in the head. It kills imagination dead." When the brattish Mike Teavee thrusts himself in front of Willy Wonka's camera, it turns him into a tiny-voiced homunculus nonetheless desperate to repeat the experience.
Stand-up comedians face similar risks. Give a star of the club circuit their own TV series and artistic ambition too often vanishes faster than a body-builder's testicles. You're more likely to find Ann Widdecombe smoking crack in a Brixton stairwell than be surprised or stretched by the likes of Alan Davies or Frank Skinner.
So the omens weren't good for Rhona Cameron's first tour after her BBC2 sitcom, Rhona. Even so, the self-styled "defensive, hard-drinking lesbian" managed to disappoint. This was a night of exhumation rather than entertainment. Out came all the subjects comedy fans believed long dead: shopping; the difficulty of assembling flat-pack furniture; Big Issue sellers; Who Wants to Be a Millionaire; even - God help us - the Six Million Dollar Man. All that was missing was partners who hog the duvet. Cameron's single attempt at topicality only underlined how out of touch she is: sorry, Rhona, but Big Brother jokes now stink like last month's fish. Delivery that was presumably meant to be casual turned out rambling, and Cameron only connected with her audience on the most superficial level: "Brighton means a lot to me - it's full of very attractive lesbians." She dropped most subjects as soon as they got a laugh or two, rather than running with them and risking losing her audience. "You have to generalise, otherwise there'd be no comedy," she told us, which takes some beating for sheer boneheadedness.
The changeovers, meanwhile, had all the grace of an arthritic hippopotamus ("So - cabs, eh?") and only her extended routines about 17th-century stalkers and the stupid rules imposed on airline passengers suggested we were following a train of thought rather than a series of back-of-an-envelope moments. The BBC is apparently mulling over whether to give Cameron another series. For her sake, let's hope the answer is no.
At Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich (01603 620917), tomorrow; Memorial Hall, Sheffield (0114-278 9789), on Wednesday; then touring.
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