Christmas Cod Pieces

RICHARD BATSON

> Sheringham Little Theatre

'Tis the season to be jolly – and this festive special by rural humorist Sid Kipper is set to get audiences in a merry mood.

Comic character Kipper, who hails from St Just, near Trunch, in Norfolk, launched his Christmas tour in his “home” county last night.

And there is little doubt that the one-man show will be decking the concert halls with howls and folly.

Christmas Cod Pieces is classic Kipper – a mixture of madcap songs, silly stories and self-deprecating rural fun – but with extra sauce and stuffing added for festive flavour.

Sid leads us on a journey through the season of “advert” to New Year's Day and beyond, his witty words putting a new slant on many traditional rituals.

There are the carol singers, including the “fancy” ones from the church choir, and the practice of wassailing – which sees incomers at Winterton being told how unwelcome they are, with a merry song and stick dance.

He sets the scene for a drunken villager who falls comatose into their meal – “sleeping in Evan Lee's pe-eas” – and lifts the lid on how turkeys got their gobbles.

Kipper rewrites classic literature such as A Christmas with Carol, which tells the story of Tinny Tom, who is too stupid to realise the misery of his poverty, while the Nitpick Papers produces some Ronnie Barkeresque word fun as characters switch their Vs and Ws.

Musical moments are accompanied by usual instruments from the walnut-shell castanets to footpump-operated Trunch bagpipes.

Superb stocking-filler squit, even if you think Christmas itself is humbug.