BWW Reviews: GYLES BRANDRETH - THE ONE TO ONE SHOW, Riverside Studios, May 6 2011

I sometimes try a little thought experiment - if I knew then what I know now, how much would I pay for ... seeing Elvis in Vegas, a ticket for the 1966 World Cup Final, a seat at one of Kenneth Williams' one man shows? Not going to happen of course, but Gyles Brandreth's One to One Show is not a bad substitute for the last of those three events. Like Kenny, Gyles is a natural storyteller, thriving on the energy transmitted by an admiring audience; he is just as appallingly indiscreet too, shamelessly name-dropping from start to finish, filling an empty stage with wit and bonhomie.

Looking back over 40 years of writing, politicking and telly, out pour the tales of theatricAl Knights, prime ministers and, er... Richard Whiteley, told with a cultivated charm and a freshness that belies the fact that he must have recounted these hundreds of times. There's little that's really new, since much has been committed to paper, especially in his terribly funny account of his time as an MP, Breaking the Code, but originality is not the point. Hearing these anecdotes up close and personal, straight from the horse's mouth and enhanced by a bit of mugging to camera (for surely Gyles lives his life as if permanently in the frame of a lens), is a rare pleasure, for it is storytelling, rather than stand-up, monologues in an age of texting, tweeting and e-mailing media interactivity. Unlike Kenny, whom I feel always had to hold himself back from being too vituperative (as the diaries and letters showed), Gyles' challenge is to avoid being too nice - adding just a little acid into the mix, predicatably when talking about political opponents like John Prescott and Tony Blair.

Like the good ol' pro that he is, Gyles knows when to take his leave and does so just as the sheer "pleased with myselfness" was starting to grate. For 120 minutes, he surveys a life that may not have shaken the world (though he is, rightly, proud of his work on the Marriage Act 1994 which allowed buildings other than registry offices to be licensed to host civil weddings - typically, he turns into a joke at his own expense) but, then again, why not be pleased with what he has achieved? For he's enjoyed every last second of it and, in this show, shares that pleasure with an audience happy to chuckle and chortle in his company.

Gyles Brandreth's One to One Show is at the Riverside Studios until Saturday May 7 and will, no doubt, pitch up somewhere near you soon. 

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