WHEN your favourite rock group is no longer what’s a fan to do? Go and see the tribute act, of course. And it’s no different for those whose favourite comedians have long since departed for the great stage in the sky.

Top tributee is Kenneth Williams and no wonder; that extravagant voice, the exuberant gestures and soaring diatribes were cut off far too soon. So hurrah, then, for Stop Messing About, which recreates the scripts of a radio show of the same name, which Williams appeared in during 1970.

It’s set in a BBC studio and Williams (Robin Sebastian) shares centre stage with Joan Sims (India Fisher), Hugh Paddick (Nigel Harrison) and announcer Douglas Smith (Charles Armstrong).

There’s no plot, just a joyous recreation of an era when references to knob-twiddling, polishing up one’s fandango and getting it in the cockpit were enough to convulse an audience.

The pace is fast, the sketches flip from solos by Paddick, as Sir Inigo Parchmutter, the Barnum of the Old Bailey, to Joan Sims’ driving test; she the short-sighted learner, Williams the horrified examiner, and to the longer spoofs, such as ‘A Hatful of Enchiladerino’ in which Sims assures us that: ‘My bodega is always open’.

It takes a little time to get used to the switches from the sketches to audience banter, but the show comes alive when Sebastian shrieks, apropos very little at all: “Ooh, Matron!” and then bellows out an immaculate string of Carry On one-liners. “Infamy, infamy; they’ve all got it in for me!” rightfully steals the show.

For those of us whose great regret in life is that they will never hear the genius of Kenneth Williams live, it was undoubtedly the next best thing.