Tim Vine - The Joke-Amotive (Live)

I had the pleasure of seeing one of my favourite all-time comedians live in Halifax almost two years ago. The master of the puns and one of most hilarious stand-ups of all time, I saw Tim Vine doing the first leg of his Joke-amotive tour live, mere days before I was admitted to hospital... but I don't think the events were connected.

Happily the tour has now been released on DVD and it was natural for me to ask for a copy for Christmas, and a copy I got!

Featuring a main set of just over an hout, it's pretty much standard fare here from Tim, in that he delivers pun after pun, interspersed with some eccentric and random props that naturally lead to more jokes, and a long line in off-the-wall songs, some crazy, some really funny.

Naturally if you hate one-liners and puns then there's nothing to change your mind here as it's pretty much more of the same from his last three DVDs but if you, like me, love his style and quick-fire delivery then the material on offer here is just as good as ever.

Though relatively short compared to other acts at sixty-five minutes it's just the right length for the style of jokes and there are many you'll be telling to your friends. And what was equally refreshing was that, coming two years after I saw them on stage, I'd forgotten many of the puns so it was new to me.

It's also noteworthy to mention how good the set is - which wasn't used when I saw him live - and testament to the eye for detail of the show. (Let's not talk about the use of gaffa tape on the props though!)

Alongside the main set there are plenty of extras which, compared to most comedy DVDs on the market where you're lucky to get anything more than a chapter menu as extras (Milton Jones I'm looking at you!), is a refreshing change. In fact, Tim Vine DVDs have always been good when it comes to extras.

Even if those extras are a little surreal. And when I say little I mean a lottle.

On this release we get Vine singing and pretending to be the King on stage in 'Blonde Elvis' and two of his self-penned short films from previous years: 'Strumming Carter', telling the story of a country and western singer brought out of retirement for a charity gig; and 'He Jumps In Fields', a mock Mid-western story about a man trying to stop his mother selling off the field he likes to jump around him. Both films have their funny moments but are rather unusual in their topics and style, and the acting and filming remains basic and amateur as defines when they were filmed, but they add to their charm. Think early student productions.

On top of these we get an insightful thirty-minute look at Vine on tour with his support and manager, and a couple of additional sketches not shown in the main feature including the popular box song and the return of Flag Hippo.

And if that's not enough Vine brings you a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the whole act.

Overall a fantastic fourth set from the pun-master and well worth picking up and watching for some hilarious and family friendly humour, with a good eye for detail on the DVD extras even if much of that content is head-scratchingly unusual.

Even if you just watch it for the main act you won't be disappointed.

8.5/10

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Milton Jones - Lion Whisperer [DVD]

Having already seen this tour live (Click here to read my review) I'm not going to go over old ground and talk about the gig which, if you read my review, know I really enjoyed.

For those of you who now have read that review pretty much all the excellent jokes of that set have come across onto the DVD with perhaps one or two extra laughs as well. There are a few changes that do impact on the overall feel. Firstly the jokes customised to the area of the gig obviously changed, and there's little that can be done about that, but with the moving of Milton's grandad from the beginning to the middle of the set, you do lose the great opening joke of late comers turning up. I can only assume that, with the setting of the night, this wasn't possible.

What you do get in replacement is a few extra filmed sections of Milton's grandad backstage with some jokes thrown in.

Though no DVD is ever going to replace the experience of seeing an act live this DVD includes most of what was in the performance I saw with those laughs now yours to treasure on tape.

Well worth a pick up for a subdued and easy-going but hilarious 70 mins of one-liners.

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A Quick Review of Christmas TV Part One: Christmas Day

Up there with family, presents and food is television on Christmas Day, a day when the television networks bring out their big guns with one-offs, festive specials and big budget versions of their hit shows. But how did this year’s Xmas shows stand up?

Obviously between unwrapping presents – 12:30, eating dinner – 3pm, and falling asleep – 11pm, it’s impossible to watch everything but, hey, I managed to catch most of what I wanted to see, starting with the Top of the Pops Christmas Show, the now annual look back at the preceding year’s music after the mainly weekly show was axed by the BBC several years ago. Though to be hypocritical and say that I rarely watched the show, I think it was a massive shame for live music that the show was dropped but I can understand their reasons as more acts are now American or are DJ based and require a bit of, er, assistance in the live department.

It was always well known that TOTP used to have the artists lip-synching but didn’t in its noughties shows but it was difficult to tell what was or wasn’t live in this show. I’m not convinced it was all live but it could have gone either way. ‘Rizzle Kicks’, performing ‘Down with the Trumpets’, certainly were as they changed some lyrics to Christmas ones, and did it well, also excelling on their appearance out of two presents on Olly Murs ‘Heart Skips A Beat’ which was equally live, Murs recreating the DJ effects of skipping well live.

Appearances by Example, Pixie Lott, Noah and the Whale and Jessie J, an earlier recorded acoustic version of ‘Price Tag’ sung beautifully, were all welcome, a tedious performance of the tedious ‘The A Team’ by Ed Sheeran, not a patch on the great ‘Lego House’, less so. ‘Little Mix’, this year’s X Factor winners, also dropped in to perform ‘Cannonball’, thankfully not the festive number one, and it was as average as you expect. And then, much to Radio 1’s annoyance I imagine, TOTP got to reveal this year’s Christmas chart topper with the promo video for ‘Wherever You Are’.

Overall a welcome return for the TOTP and aside from a few dodgy acts and some countdowns of the big tunes of the year which including songs that were so big I’ve never heard of them, it was well worth watching. They even managed to throw in a fitting tribute to Jimmy Saville. Now then, now then.

After a lovely Christmas dinner – thanks mum! – and with the power of Sky Plus we watched The Queen, helpfully revealed at the end to be a Sky News production, possibly their first of the year that doesn’t include ticker tape banners or phone hacking. Ooh.

Her speech was as great and rousing as usual and for an 85-year-old woman she can still hold the screen and stand for a considerable length of time. Obviously this year it was backed with the knowledge that her husband was in hospital having undergone a heart operation whilst she continued on with life as usual, so the message of family being important might not have been as strong as it would have been. At least she had Mike Tindall there for all her dwarf-tossing needs.

As I said to my parents, not everyone is lucky enough to have a Phil with them at Christmas dinner this year.

After the Queen’s speech it was a break until the next programme, a break I filled with Milton Jones on one of my Christmas DVDs and a scout around the music channels, one of which was showing ‘Queen at 3’ against her majesty with him Mercury. But, at 4:50 it was time for Ratatouille.

Being the penultimate Pixar film I had to see to complete the set – just Cars 2 to see now – I was eager to watch it. ‘Up’, one of their most recent efforts, is one of the best films of all time and I hoped that ‘Ratatouille’ from a similar era would be up to it. Sadly, it’s not one of their best films. The premise and animation are as clever and well implemented as ever, and the last half-an-hour of the film was an exciting mixture of chases, emotion, drama and a fitting conclusion to the story. It’s just a shame that the first hour wasn’t as exciting as it could have been and was just missing some sparkle that I can’t put my finger on. We’ve been spoilt recently with some cracking CGI films – ‘Arthur Christmas’ being the most recent example – and this seemed to be missing something. The premise seemed to take a while to set up and it took a while to care about the characters.

Still, it was an animated film well worth watching but not up there with ‘Up’ or ‘Toy Story 2’ from the Pixar stable.

With telephone calls to family members filling up the next half an hour, it was next onto Doctor Who and the Christmas special ‘The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe’, a loose – very loose – take on the Narnia story.

It’s well documented on my blog that I much prefer the Steven Moffat / Matt Smith era of ‘Doctor Who’ over the RTD / David Tennant one. However, I didn’t much enjoy last year’s Christmas special even if it had one of the most sad, touching ends to the story ever. I think the combination of a flying shark, Michael Gambon’s shockingly tedious acting (ala his work in Harry Potter) and a so-so story did it for me. Though I do admit to sobbing a little at the fate of Katherine Jenkins’ character.

This year’s special was still very much tugging at the heartstrings. Starting with the Doctor blowing up a spaceship and landing on earth in an ill-fitting space-suit to be rescued by Claire Skinners’ war-time mother and taken to the TARDIS was a funny opening including getting the wrong Police Box, but seemed a waste of CGI with blowing up a spaceship that was only in for less than a minute. Following the Doctor’s departure we learn that her husband, played by Alexander Armstrong, has died three years later whilst in a bomber over the English Channel, but she hasn’t yet told their two children.

So, at Christmas, off they go to their uncle’s house which is deserted, apart from the Doctor as the Caretaker, who has turned the house into a magical playground with moving furniture, a kids bedroom stuffed with toys, tricks and, of course, two hammocks, and a Christmas tree with a mysterious blue parcel under it.

A special Christmas treat for the kids, Cyril, the young boy, opens it early and finds it takes him to a planet where decoration-covered Christmas trees grow naturally and there is a mysterious tower in the centre with strange wooden men in it. It’s not long before the Doctor with the daughter in tow find out where he’s gone and, instead of the safe forest he’d planned, there’s something remiss and they find the tower with none of them suitable to carry the spirits of the forest, who are to be killed by an extreme form of deforestation about to occur with acid rain, a plot stand found out by the mother who stumbles across the group of deforesters (is that even a word?) led by Bill Bailey and Arabella Weir who bring some great comic relief to the piece and are sadly underused in the story. I could have watched Bill Bailey all day in this story.

With the family all reunited in the tower the mother is found to be the perfect carrier for the souls and seemingly a lot of hair to hide the gold ring which quickly disappears from her head in possibly a prop malfunction and they head off through the time vortex to save the forest and get back home and, in a piece of lucky serendipity, become a guiding light for her husband in the fighter who survives the journey home to be reunited with the family. All that is left is for the Doctor to realise the importance of family and head over to the Pond household to join them for Christmas dinner, a tear coming to his eye.

Now, I’m going to be the first time to say that the storyline of this year’s Doctor Who wasn’t the best. Moffat once more refuses to kill off a character again and brings him back in a rather contrived way; it’s very sickly sweet in how they save the trees; and there’s a lot of tears. That said, however, I found the story very touching and a tear did come to my eye just like the Doctor’s. God, I must be getting more sentimental as I get older, but the combination of storyline, music and acting got to me.

Sure, it wasn’t the most original storyline ever and Bill Bailey and Arabella Weir deserved more screen time, but the locations and eye to detail were beautiful. Matt Smith was as spot-on with the Doctor as ever during the spacesuit sequence and the house-tour sketch, and managed to cover a whole range of emotions throughout the piece, cementing him as my favourite Doctor so far. Steven Moffat is proving to be a good writer of the series and though the storyline did once more hit the big reset button that plagued RTD’s era as well as his, there was a fair bit of emotion in it.

Now from one end of drama to the other and we come to Coronation Street. Now I’ve not watched this soap regularly for eight years now so I only really watch it when I’m seeing my parents or for big occasions like last year’s impressive fiftieth anniversary train crash plotline. This year’s big storylines involved a Nativity-birth parallel (tres original!) and the evil Tracy Barlow once more cooking up some lies, this time that Becky pushed her downstairs causing her to miscarry. This plotline also led to Becky almost killing herself in a drink-fuelled fire and her swearing revenge on Tracy, whilst Tracy’s mother knows that the truth that she lost the kids before meeting Becky.

It was quite a good episode of Corrie but there are several things to note. Firstly it started with the musical accompaniment of Shakin’ Steven’s ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ over a montage of happy and sad scenes. Since when did it become ‘Home and Away’? Secondly, is Steve an idiot? Tracy has already murdered her boyfriend, served time for it, tried to take Steve’s daughter off him and done all sorts of other unhinged things. Why would he get back with her? And thirdly, are all the men in soaps stupid? Why is Peter Barlow having an affair with Carla? Does he not learn after the whole bigamy things years ago?

Surely me criticising the reality of soap operas is an insane thing to do but the characters seem to change so wildly in their actions and motivations?

Coronation Street’s Christmas Day show wasn’t a patch on last year’s human drama, but it was never going to be. However, it is slowly turning into Eastenders with far less of the humour it once enjoyed and far more miscarriages, fires, hospital-isation, affairs and all that malarkey. Ho ho ho indeed.

After a trip to Manchester, which was covered in snow according to Corrie when nowhere in this part of England has had anything more than a light covering, it was back to the PVR to watch Strictly Come Dancing, a one-off light-hearted version of the show featuring Simon from Blue, Charlie from Eastenders, Barry the boxer, Debra the impressionist (not sure who she was dancing as), and my favourite Su Pollard. Now I didn’t see all the show as I was doing other things but what I did see was some pleasant Christmas Day night fun, with Craig dressed very well as the Grinch, some cheesy jokes from Bruce and a poor, but funny, dance routine by Su “You Rang M’Lord?” Pollard. It’s not a show I regularly watch but it was amusing to dip-in and –out of.

Earlier in the night we’d also taped The Gruffalo’s Child, a sequel to last year’s CGI adaptation of the first kiddies book. Worried that this was going to be a shameful cash-in of taking the original story and shoe-horning a sequel out of it, I realised at the end it was based on a second book. Having never read the Gruffalo as a kid – it’s 1999 release meant it was well out of my childhood – there was no emotional connection to watch either the first or the second film – and also being about twenty years too old for its target market, it would be a strange thing to watch but, like the first, the slow, pedestrian delivery of the story mixed in with some gentle humour and beautiful animation make it a joy to watch.

It’s often the little things that make these short animations and in this case it was bits like the hedgehog’s two cute appearances, and the detail of the footprints in the snow. The voice acting, style and detail were as impressive as last year and though, yes, it’s not the most dynamic of short films, well stretching out how long it should last for, it was a fun piece of story for kids and “big kids” too.

Last but not least was the festive edition of Have I Got A Bit More News For You and, thankfully, not a hastily cobbled together compilation of best bits as I thought it would be. With all fresh material, Christmas decorations and a great lead from one of the best guest presenters Martin Clunes, it was forty-minutes of great topical laughs, showing how great the programme is as it enters its twentieth year on air.

Overall, Christmas Day 2011 was a good day for television programmes with a good cross section of shows, and I didn’t even get a chance to re-watch Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ or McIntyre’s Christmas Comedy Roadshow but hopefully will soon!

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The York Family Robinson [York Theatre Royal Review]

The York Family Robinson
York Theatre Royal, Tuesday 20th December 2011

It’s been seventeen years since we started going to the pantomime at the Theatre Royal in York, quite possibly one of the most unique pantos in the country. Though it doesn’t contain any celebrities, soap-stars or big names that will sell tickets, it does contain Berwick Kaler (lead actor, writer, dame), Marin Barrass, Suzy Cooper and David Leonard, who have become big names in the York area, attracting people from all over the country and the world to the annual pantomime, this year taking the story of the Swiss Family Robinson, as loosely as always of course, giving it a York makeover and delivering it to packed out audiences over seven weeks.

The storyline involves villain Zantanus Junior, son of the devil, attempting to find the horns of his father which will give him the ultimate power of evil, but only if he finds them within twelve months. Whilst attempting to find Devil’s Island, he stumbles across the Robinson family who, with Man Friday knowing where the island is, are kidnapped by him and land in Australia, only to find the island and ultimately stopping Zantanus from retrieving the horns. This is a very quick summary of what is, as usually, a twisty-turny mad-cap pantomime that puts humour over plotting.

If I’m being honest to myself I have found the pantomime going downhill over the last few years with the humour feeling a little tired even if the feel was as good as ever. However I feel that this year was very much a return to form.

The backdrops of the production were as glorious as usual with Whitby, Australia and Devil’s island all beautifully recreated with great use of lighting, moving parts and, of course, visual jokes. All the great trademarks of the panto were there from Berwick’s wacky dresses, to the blacked-out UV sequence (these year a dancing bones sequence), to the pre-filmed video bit which, this time, kicked off the second act, and was a well produced section on a boat filmed in Scarborough which has, year on year, get more ambitious and more funny. Plus, Harry Gration was back in it.

There was, however, something missing and that was the usual water sequence where Kaler and Barrass end up covering each other in water in a series of contrived, but funny, water sequences. Though there was a brief bit involving tea and some in the filmed section, this funny slapstick bit was missing and I missed it.

But it was somewhat made up by the ambition of the lead dame. Not exactly a spring chicken, I thought over the last few years Berwick had been calming down his energetic role, but the amount of high-wire work he did in this production, including a sequence over a bridge involving a skateboard and a unicycle that involved him hanging in the rafters for a considerable time, plus a hilarious rendition of Swan Lake, showed he was pretty much up for anything the younger cast members would do.

Song wise they were as varied as ever and thankfully lacking some of the more cheesy sentimental tunes they’ve included in recent years. ‘England’, a riff on Westlife’s ‘My Love’, ‘Whatever Happened To My Part’ and ‘Colour My World’ were all great songs with funny lyrics and well sung by the cast even if, as usual, the words from the chorus songs got lost in the music, which was a professionally played as ever by the four musicians. Only ‘Rock-A-Hula-Zumba’ I feel wasn’t up to the other songs, but that was just one out of over a dozen classic panto tunes.

The panto was as ambitious as ever this year. The sequence with the moving boat was very impressively done as well the slapstick bed sequence with moving parts, cast members disappearing and re-appearing, plus loads of quick costume changes. What they manage to pull off each year live on stage is always worth seeing and this year was definitely no exception.

The cast, together now for many years, naturally work well off each other. Berwick Kaler, as Annie Robinson the chief dame, was as enthusiastic and funny as ever and Marin Barrass as son Jim was the perfect foil as usual. Even though ill – more on that shortly – Suzy Cooper as Rosie was as bubbly as usual, and my favour cast member – David Leonard – once more played the villain with relish.

AJ Powell, Sian Howard, Julie-Anne Castro and Jamie Harris, the latter a very welcome return, all filled out the cast well and I’m sure AJ Powell will be a future replacement for one of them when the time comes for someone to retire.

Though the best year of the pantomime there has been in the past few years, the showing I attended was also hit with problems like I’d never seen at the York one. Firstly, unavoidably, Suzy Cooper was suffering from a chest infection so had to step out of singing, performing her tune to a backing track but using a ventriloquist dummy to great effect which added more to the song than there probably would have been without it. Though, to be honest, if it hadn’t been mentioned as part of a joke, I probably wouldn’t have noticed due to her still great delivery of her lines and the puppet explanation for the song.

Elsewhere, and I label some of these as mistakes warily as the productions are known for ad-libbing mistakes in, but Berwick missed a cue early on, there were some mic problems at a couple of times and the extendable leg near the end failed to extend, but all were used as spring boards for more jokes so added to the production, it’s just unusual to see a series of such problems in a usually flawless production, but we did see it only six performances in this time so is early in the run.

In ‘The York Family Robinson’ the ‘York Theatre Royal’ has once more got a great asset in a production with some fantastic sets, great characters, fantastic jokes and songs and a panto that attracts people from all over the country. An improvement on the last few years, if you can still get a ticket it’s well worth catching for a great night of jokes. I’ve managed to get tickets for the last night this year for the first time so it’ll be interesting to see how that turns out, and how mad the final show will be!

7/10

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They've cut Tim Minchin - good! Now onto Chris De Burgh and the Snowman!

Thank God that ITV have had the sense to cut the incredibly offensive 'WoodyAllenJesus' from Jonathan Ross' chat show. You can hear the abomination below on YouTube.



Never before have I heard such a serious and vicious attack on the Christian religion with such cutting comparisions as connecting him to Derren Brown and Woody Allen. What does he think he is - a comedian?

Before I go to write a letter of complaint to the Daily Mail that the video has appeared on YouTube and could be corrupting our youth, causing cancer and raising house prices, I should say I fully support the cutting on such four minutes of blastheming from the ITV show and hopefully this will lead to other removals of such songs from our society and ITV's schedules like...



Chris De Burgh dares to suggest that Jesus travelling to this world is because he's an alien in a UFO. Comparing JC to ET? Shocking!



What is this? The sixties? We had enough of this filth in Carry on films? How can they get away with such shocking and vivid sexual innuendo? Terrible.

And the worst offender?



No, the only person who could do such miracles is our very own Jesus. Not some sort of snowman. And he doesn't even come back to life at the end like JC.

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This Weekend’s Single Releases (18th Dec)

Delilah- Love You So

A singer in the style of Emeli Sande and Duffy if you mixed them up this is a slice of low-key RnB with a string backing and a sense that it doesn’t really want to get anywhere fast. Her voice is ethereal and pleasant to listen to, and fits in well with the strings, and there is a certain James Bond feel to it. By the end of the song it will have quickly stuck in your head thanks to its catchy, repetitive chorus and well produced music track. It’s not an amazing three-and-a-half minutes but should showcase this interesting artist. [6/10]



The Milk - B-Roads

Sort of sounding like Cee-Lo Green if he was a little bit chirpier, this is a soulful tune whose quality and memorable tune with some production tricks thrown in for good measure belies the low number of views of the video on YouTube. Clear, well-written vocals and some really great harmonies and backing vocals complete this song that brings a bit of summer sunshine and soul cheer to these cold Winter months. A great listen and a surprise. [7.5/10]



Nero - Reaching Out

If pendulum met up with Daft Punk and employed a decent proper vocalist you’d probably end up with something like this. The electronic side of this tune is well presented and even six singles into their release schedule it still just about deserves a single release. Definitely a tune at home in a club environment if you enjoy the 80s side of Daft Punk mixed in with some loops and Benny Benassi style tricks then you need to download this. It’s a three-minute song that doesn’t outstay its welcome and delivers something enjoyable whilst it’s playing. [6.5/10]



The Only Way Is Essex - Last Christmas

It’s difficult to think how much more damage could be done to the Wham classic Christmas hit after Crazy Frog did the by-numbers cover of it by thrusting in some of its sounds, but clearly TOWIE had yet to be conceived. Amazingly the female vocals throughout it actually sound well done, it’s just a shame that it’s peppered with “hilarious” sound bites over the vocals that sound like the bits from the Hot Pantz song but without the sense of irony or tongue-in-cheek. It’s for charity so I can’t criticise it too much; actually, I will. Donate some money to charity and listen to the Wham original instead. It’s a competent cover ruined by stupid soundbites. Not as bad as it could have been but still a little bit cringey. [5.5/10]

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A Trip to Chiquitos and Arthur Christmas (Movie) – Review

I am afraid to say that I am disappointed in myself. As a massive fan of Aardman films I have only just got round to seeing their latest and fourth appearance in the cinema “Arthur Christmas”, their second CGI offering and the first of their new deal with Sony Pictures.

Today I finally righted the wrong of me not seeing it and I’m so glad I did.

But first there was the meal and a little side to this review. Today was the first time I tried a meal at Chiquito, a Mexican version of Nandos with less of an obsession with chicken. Having picked up the tickets early from Vue - £8 a ticket???? and they tell you where to sit??? – I wandered over to the restaurant and grabbed a drink whilst I waited for my parents. After the barman decided to spill the first attempt at the Mexican Milky Way - Amaretto, Baileys, chocolate liqueur, Eristoff Vodka, milk & cream, topped with whipped cream and a dusting of chocolate as their website says – knocking the blender over and covering himself in milky goodness (steady!) I managed to enjoy the £4.99 drink which was as nice as any of the Baileys-based cocktails you get at the chains and reasonably priced and sized.

With my parents having now arrived we could sit down to enjoy the meal. We were treated to some complimentary tortillas with tomato salsa that were like over-sized Doritos but obviously more home-made, but perhaps not enough salsa to really make it fair on the whole party, with every spooning up of salsa seriously depleting the pot.

For starters I remained as boring as ever and went with loaded potato skins but for £4.99 there was just a disappointing two skins, though they were tasty and the topping of bacon and sour cream was delicious, with a pot of barbecue sauce on the size. They were, ultimately, not as generous as the equally tasty skins you get at, say, Frankie and Bennys. The similarly priced chilli poppers and slightly cheaper duck taquito that my parents had were equally as tasty but equally as titchy.

Onto the main course and I’d definitely hit lucky with my choice of my favourite Mexican dishes, fajitas. I plumped for the sirloin steak version which was delivered on a sizzling plate at my chosen medium-rare with onion, tomato and pepper salad-thing, and was matched up with three pots of sour cream, tomato salsa, half-a-dozen fajita wraps, a plate of lettuce and cheese and some coleslaw I’d ordered as a side as I was a pig. Though a hefty £15.99 the amount of food there did justify its price and the amount of food was just right for a hefty appetite. Perhaps I would have liked a little bit more cheese and lettuce but it wasn’t a deal breaker. The food was served sizzling hot and at the end I was more than satisfied with the amount. The burger that my mum enjoyed seemed a fair size but my dad’s southern fried chicken perhaps not so much, but they were all very tasty.

Overall the bill came to just over £65 which for three people including drinks isn’t bad. The atmosphere of the restaurant was pleasant with enough Mexican pictures to convince you the brand has been anywhere near the land of Tequila – as much as Frankie and Bennys tries to make itself look like an Italian-American diner, but thankfully Chiquito doesn’t try to teach you Mexican in the loos – with some Christmas songs slotted into the more Mexican offerings, plus the service was friendly and relatively prompt considering it was reasonably quiet, plus for those who want to delve further, the toilets were immaculate.

I think if they could plump up the size of the starters and learn not to pour cocktails over themselves then it would be almost a flawless meal.

Now onto the main reason I’m writing this review: ‘Arthur Christmas’. So it’s over to Vue, where they charge a lot for the showings (though, to be fair, not much more than Cineworld, my hang out in Bradford) and assign you seats (unlike Cineworld). However, with the screening being relatively quiet, we moved seats to a better sitting position mid-film so as not to damage our necks staring up at the screen. And for once the kids in front of us were well behaved and quiet, which made for a refreshing change in a kids screening.

Before we could get through to the actual theme there were obviously the adverts to endure. Vue, it seems, may be wanting you not to record the film. At least 1/3rd of the slides of the opening slide show were about not recording and then some disc jockey from Minster FM came onto repeat the message. Fine, got the message. Not that I’d be recording a film that’s been out for six weeks anyway; it will have already been torrented to hell.

Also before the feature presentation there was some more Aardman goodness with a new trailer for Pirates!, their next feature film, this time stop-motion, coming out next year. I’d only seen the first trailer and this one certainly expanded the premise of the movie and it looks hilarious, so can’t wait for that. They also did an extra advert to promote – yes, you guessed it – not pirating films, which was a great addition especially with the extra work it would have been of stop-motion.

So, ‘Arthur Christmas’. It tells the story of the latest in the line of the Christmas family with Malcolm Christmas approaching his seventieth festive delivery but it’s his son Steve who is the main contributor to the delivery of presents to children all around the world, a military-minded man voiced by Hugh Laurie, masterminding a hi-tech team of elves launched from an ‘Independence Day’-style spaceship sleigh who deliver the presents. Malcolm’s other son, Steve’s brother, Arthur – voiced by James McAvoy - is a clumsy, but well-meaning person who deals with the letter writing. When an elf drops a present after the completion of Christmas it’s up to Arthur, Malcolm’s father - the oldest living Father Christmas - and an old sleigh to get this one present to the only child not to receive a gift on Christmas Day before sunrise when she wakes up.

What follows the early exposition is a top-form pastiche of military, spy and alien films. Scenes are captioned by locations, times and witty statistics, with an over-arching focus on gadgets, military spoofs and tongue-in-cheek action pieces. And, as with any Aardman film, the attention to detail is immense with some many on-screen and background visual jokes it’s a shoe-in for DVD purchase to catch them all, with everything from funny notes, to background signs, to even a Shaun The Sheep on the floor.

The 97 minutes of the film shoots by. The script is as inventive as anything we’ve had so far from Aardman with the opening Christmas delivery montage fast-paced and incredibly tight and choreographed as the elves deliver the presents, with many tongue-in-cheek nods to mobile phones and modern living in the pursuit of delivering the presents. The use of gadgets as seen in the Wallace and Gromit serious is prevalent here and the sheer Britishness of the movie shines through, but without it seeming as forced as in, say, ‘Chicken Run’. And, as far as realism goes with a team of hundreds of elves, it does offer a plausible and well-thought-out explanation of how so many toys get delivered in such a short space of time.

Much of the film is taken up with Arthur and his grandfather attempting to deliver this one last present on the original sled, with some great pastiches to alien films, rolling news and the same modern-but-retro technology employed in the Wallace and Gromit films.

There are a few jokes here and there that fall flat and it does seem about thirty minutes in that the film has lost its direction (but it soon regains it) and is coming to a premature conclusion but in the most it’s a laugh-out-loud film with some great unexpected twists in the plot. The voice acting is superb and the animation very high quality, especially with the massive scenes of elves at times. The CGI also captures Aardman’s style of characters, but perhaps not as much as in ‘Flushed Away’. Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy and Ashley Jensen in particular all do some great voice acting but the whos-who of famous names all contribute to an excellent film. The film does wander close to sugary-sweet sentiment at its conclusion but it is genuinely touching and I’m not afraid to say that a tear did nearly come to my eyes at the end.

Filled with the Aardman magic we’ve come to expect, it’s a funny, touching, clever family film that is suitable for all ages with some very inventive set pieces and more visual jokes than you can shake an elf at. Sure, the plot line isn’t the most inventive in that Christmas has to be saved when something goes wrong, but it’s so well delivered you can forget this and enjoy the film and the scenes within it.

I’m not sure if it will become a Christmas classic but it’s a film that all the family can enjoy and there’s so much detail to enjoy in the CGI and visual jokes. I think at times it might be a little too uninteresting for very young kids but it’s a film not to be missed. A top festive film from Aardman and Sony and it bodes well for Pirates! next year.

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