Review: BORIS: WORLD KING, Trafalgar Studios 2, April 21 2016

When my partner first saw Boris Johnson on television some twenty or so years ago, she asked me if he was "real"? Having grown up in Sweden, she (understandably) thought that Boris was an Ali G figure or a British Les Patterson, a character developed by a comedian to satirise the most extreme buffoonish posh Englishman with an oversized sense of entitlement. And, if Boris was unmasked all these years later, to be exactly such a spoof, would we be surprised? Well, no more surprised than some of us are to learn that he is 15/8 favourite to be the UK's next Prime Minister.

Boris: World King (at the Trafalgar Studios 2 until 14 May) caricatures this almost uncaricaturable figure to comic effect - or greater comic effect, to be more accurate. Writer Tom Crawshaw, with plenty of help from the ad libs of David Benson as Boris and a superb turn from Alice McCarthy as his much put-upon PA, traces the life from school to global reign. We get the bumbling of course, the mea culpas, the building of "Brand Boris" and the meteoric rise from Bullingdon teenager to conservative journalist to Conservative Mayor of London to... well, who knows? We also get the womanising, the dodgy associates, the vaulting ambition and the breathtaking arrogance. But, sweating under a hairpiece that Michael Fabricant might turn down as too luxuriant, Benson just about stays the right side of Monty Python's Upper Class Twit Of The Year schtick to be credible and McCarthy anchors the more madcap moments beautifully, as well as getting plenty of laughs herself.

This was once an Edinburgh show and it'll attract that kind of audience on Whitehall. The comedy is broad enough to enjoy after a few drinks but also bites enough to please those brought up on HIGNFY. There are one or two cuts that might sharpen the scalpel - did we need the table-tennis interlude? - but the laughs come thick and fast, all-through at about 80 minutes.

No doubt Boris himself will have views (and if anyone has proved the cliche about there being no such thing as bad publicity, he has) and I suspect few in the audience will be voting for him wherever he turns up next, so he has little to lose on this gig. As for me? I'd already made up my mind and today's dismal Trump-inspired slur on President Obama just confirms another step on Boris's slow journey from faux-Fool to London's Lear.

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