Note – a shorter version of this review is in today’s Morning Star newspaper.

The Comedy Store is showing its age. The logo is very eighties, as are much of its regular clientele. 

Most are here to see Paul Merton, him off the telly, who has been doing improv for longer than your correspondent can literally remember.

The Comedy Store Players, of which Paul is a founding member, is in the Guinness Book of Records – another relic – as the world’s longest-running comedy show with the same cast.

But here, on a Wednesday, Merton is branching out without [Richard] Vranch and co, and is performing alongside fellow improv legend Suki Webster and a revolving cast of younger improvisation specialists, who have millions of TikTok views but not as many homes in Suffolk.

There’s a lingering cultural blockage of lingering boomers in comedy especially, and tonight’s guests are brilliant performers who deserve the size of audience a household name like Merton delivers.

Tonight’s guests, Alexander Jeremy, of Shoot From The Hip, and Susan Harrison, best known for the musical improv Showstoppers, are both brilliant here, as is the musical accompaniment, Jordan Paul Clarke, who shades and embellishes the scenes so perfectly you barely notice he’s there, like a good goalkeeper or ego-free referee.

This feels like Webster’s show. She hosts and comperes, while Merton lurks amiably in the background during the changeovers. The show is in the short form “game” format, one considered a bit basic bitch by long-form aficionados, but perfect for a Wednesday early evening crowd who are already on their second bottle of wine.

Audience participation in improv is never cruel, and here is limited to shouted suggestions, sound-effects, and one front-row member acting as puppeteer in one game, her exasperation as funny as the performer ad libs and increasingly painful-looking body positions.

We see several classic games, including Freeze Tag, The Three Headed Expert, and a variation on Guess The Job in which Merton has to guess what excuses he himself has made for being late to work, as suggested by the audience (he travelled on a sexually frustrated ostrich while wearing a fedora, apparently). 

Jeremy is perfect as the sexually frustrated ostrich, unbuttoning his shirt seductively at the audience, and Harrison is an immediately believable officious boss, by turns firm and accepting as she leads Merton through his ridiculous predicament.

After a slightly nervous start, not helped by some injudicious edits by the senior players, Jeremy and Harrison get more and more stage time, and the audience begins to trust them as implicitly as they do Webster and Merton, the latter of whom – as always – acts like he’s just got off a Tooting omnibus and accidentally shambled into the role of national treasure.

The secret? Simple really: decades of practice until one can appear brilliantly unbothered while the feet are pedalling furiously just below the waterline.

It’s interesting to see the contrasting approaches of the veteran and younger performers. Merton is basically always playing a version of Merton, happy mainly in his own accent and to break the fourth wall with sarcastic asides. 

Webster is by turns mock-posh and filthy, her characters forever with their arses hanging out of a car window, or equally cursed and blessed by the possession of voice-activated all-body vibrators.

Jeremy and Harrison, meanwhile, have a wider range of voices, accents, characters, and beautifully convincing mannerisms. The Emotions sketch showcases Harrison’s skills here particularly, her frame exploding with rage or lust, while Jeremy gets the laughs simply by pretending to be French.

But Webster and Merton still have the edge when it comes to punchlines.

The second half allows the cast to stretch their wings a bit more, with lovely improvised songs from Webster and Harrison, and a madcap, audience-scripted farce which takes in love, indecent exposure, and an old couple embarking on an exciting new adventure.

This, of course, works as a tagline for the show as a whole.

Paul Merton and Suki Webster’s Improv Show is every Wednesday at 7:30pm at the Comedy Store, London.