Comedy review: Alex Horne

Published on 17/03/2010 18:02

ALEX HORNE: WORDWATCHING *** THE STAND, GLASGOW

ALEX Horne expresses surprise at the size of his audience, perhaps underestimating the cult appeal of his BBC 4 comedy quiz We Need Answers. Clearly, this keen logophile, a passionate lover of words, has a core demographic, as revealed by the audience member who injects a brief bit of Scrabble banter into proceedings. Reprising and extending his 2008 Edinburgh Fringe hour to coincide with the publication of his book Wordwatching, Horne betrays some mild tetchiness with the multimedia gimmicks of his show, which at various points involve him conversing with his own disembodied head on screens either side of him. Yet his undimmed enthusiasm for his "verbal gardening" project – trying to get ten new words, such as "bollo" and "mental safari", into common parlance and the dictionary – ensures that his admirable campaign has maintained its momentum and could yet succeed.

His modus operandi for following Beyonc "bootylicious" Knowles and Hull City's new boss Iain "bouncebackability" Dowie into the Oxford English's hallowed pages is mischievously audacious: ranging from the petty vandalism of Wikipedia to confounding George Alagiah live on BBC news with one of his coinages, all the while pointlessly planting devious rumours about his joke-writing past in Budgens supermarket and attributing false height to Natasha Kaplinsky.

Although only occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, Horne's diffusion of his words across newspaper articles, internet forums, radio text-ins and television appearances makes for a consistently amusing montage and a far better use of his laptop than the exchanges with his recorded selves. Moreover, the finale, in which he agonises about throwing away hard-fought for victory on Countdown simply for the sake of planting one of his words with the viewing public, is enjoyably gripping.