Paul Merton and Suki Webster’s Improv Show
Comedy Store, London

THE Comedy Store is showing its age. The logo is very ’80s, as are much of its regular clientele. Most are here to see Paul Merton, him off the telly, who has been doing improv for longer than your correspondent can literally remember.

But here, on a Wednesday, Merton is branching out without (Richard) Vranch and co, and is performing alongside fellow improv legend Suki Webster and a revolving cast of younger improvisation specialists, who have millions of TikTok views but not as many homes in Suffolk.

This feels like Webster’s show. She hosts and comperes, while Merton lurks amiably in the background during the changeovers. The show is in the short form “game” format, one considered a bit basic bitch by long-form aficionados, but perfect for a Wednesday early evening crowd who are already on their second bottle of wine.

We see several classic games, including Freeze Tag, The Three Headed Expert, and a variation on Guess The Job in which Merton has to guess what excuses he himself has made for being late to work, as suggested by the audience (he travelled on a sexually frustrated ostrich while wearing a fedora, apparently). 

There’s a cultural blockage of lingering boomers in comedy especially, and tonight’s guests are brilliant performers who deserve the size of audience a household name like Merton delivers.

Tonight’s guests, Alexander Jeremy, of Shoot From The Hip, and Susan Harrison, best known for the musical improv Showstoppers, are both brilliant here, as is the musical accompaniment, Jordan Paul Clarke, who shades and embellishes the scenes so perfectly you barely notice he’s there, like a good goalkeeper or ego-free referee.

It’s interesting to see the contrasting approaches of the veteran and younger performers. Merton is basically always playing a version of Merton, happy mainly in his own accent and to break the fourth wall with sarcastic asides. 

Webster is by turns mock-posh and filthy, her characters forever with their arses hanging out of a car window, or equally cursed and blessed by the possession of voice-activated all-body vibrators.

Jeremy and Harrison, meanwhile, have a wider range of voices, accents, characters, and beautifully convincing mannerisms. The Emotions sketch showcases Harrison’s skills here particularly, her frame exploding with rage or lust, while Jeremy gets the laughs simply by pretending to be French.

But Webster and Merton still have the edge when it comes to punchlines. The secret? Simple really: decades of practice until one can appear brilliantly unbothered while the feet are pedalling furiously just below the waterline.

Paul Merton and Suki Webster’s Improv Show is every Wednesday at 7.30pm at the Comedy Store, Soho, London. Box office: (020) 7024-2060, london.thecomedystore.co.uk.