The comedy of despair

Character comic Steve Delaney is one of the dedicated oddballs of the comedy circuit. He has been ploughing a lonely furrow as Doncaster's tin-pot dipsomaniac Count Arthur Strong since the mid-Nineties with little mainstream recognition, but his dogged determination is starting to pay off.

Following his last show, in which Strong delivered a tipsy lecture on Egyptology, this year he presents The Greatest Story Ever Told, a misguided biblical tour from the dawn of creation to the Origin Of The Species, "by Charles Dance".

As ever, his thread soon unravels, thanks to over-enthusiastic wine tasting and the heady excitement that a cottage publisher has just commissioned his autobiography. He is soon stumbling around, firing off malapropisms and random abuse, convinced that he is too good for his audience.

It is so convincingly executed that when Strong becomes lost for words in a haze of cheap, offlicence Rioja, one doesn't know whether to laugh or shift awkwardly. This is not about easy humour. There are hints of Hancock's delusions, flashes of Archie Rice's despair. The northern pathos of Johnny Vegas is there too.

Things end on an enjoyably angst-free note, a spirited solo re-enactment of the Last Supper worthy of a Crackerjack finale. Though Strong seems more interested in his carry-outs than Judas Escariot.

Repeated tomorrow, then 26-28 February. Information: 020 7478 0100.

Count Arthur Strong's The Greatest Story Ever Told