The Stage

Who’s the Daddy?

Published Wednesday 27 July 2005 at 17:55 by Jeremy Austin

In giving this Ray Cooney-style farce a hammy, sub-Footlights feel, writers Toby Young and Lloyd Evans, along with director Tamara Harvey, seem to acknowledge that their satirical interpretation of the events surrounding David Blunkett’s impregnation of Kimberly Quinn is a cliche-ridden homage to a theatrical style now thankfully exiled mainly to crumbling regional venues.

It is fun. It is silly. It is entertaining. And it is not supposed to be anything more, or less. If Alistair Beaton’s Feelgood - the 2001 West End hit set inside Blair’s inner sanctum - was the kind of smug, knowing satire that John Bird and John Fortune might appear in on BBC2, then Who’s the Daddy? is a low budget, half hour comedy on Five, made with puppets.

It is exquisitely well cast. Tim Hudson’s Boris Johnson is a Bunter-esque good egg who will not allow anything as mundane as work get in the way of a glass of bubbly and a quick fumble with aristocratic airhead Petronella Wyatt - Sara Crowe in the production’s best performance.

Claudia Shear, as wide as she is loud, oils gleefully as Quinn. Her use of sex as power is a brilliant counterpoint to Peter Hamilton Dyer’s slimy Rod Liddle using power for sex. Ex-EastEnder Michelle Ryan hams it as tarty secretary Tiffany, but convinces as her Guardian spy alter ego.

Blunkett himself is a loveable, if naive, ‘Northern Bloke’ who comes out of the whole thing very well, although Paul Prescott’s performance was a pace behind the action. But by far the most enjoyable interpretation is Saul Reichlin’s vampiric Michael Howard.