Idjit's guide to Ireland

Puckoon is a Northern Ireland farce, written and directed by Terence (The Brylcreem Boys) Ryan and based on Spike Milligan's absurdist novel.

With two contentious hands holding the mapping pencil, the 1924 border between the Irish Free State and this part of the UK cuts a wee village in two.

It is a plus for the boozers, a minus for the stiffs. While any Catholic deceased in the north now requires a passport to be interred in the papist cemetery in the south, the boys sinking the black stuff all congregate around the cheaper end of the bisected bar.

Every Anglo-Oirish stereotype known to whimsy writers staggers in and out of the story: Bible-toting priests, plummy English officers, two IRA idjits who share one cigarette and several homemade bombs ... Everyone acts at the top

of their voices and gives out more blarney than you'd hear in a tourist trap on a slow day in Eire.

Milligan's Goonish wit is long past its sell-by date. With Spike in his grave, his intended role as The Writer, a transcendental character who discusses the characters' fates with them, is played by Richard Attenborough as if God the Father were on a day visit.

Milo O'Shea, Elliott Gould, Nickolas Grace, Freddie Jones, Griff Rhys Jones and Sean Hughes are all too well known to avail themselves of anonymity: they have seldom been worse. An aggressive Ulster character called Alex Walker isn't badly played by Richard Rickings. He deserved a larger part.