A script based on a West End smash last performed in 1991. A cast comprised of the estuary’s finest. A director who hasn’t made a film since 'Carry-On' knockoff ‘Not Now, Comrade’ in 1976. A budget well upwards of £150. What could possibly go right?
As it happens, absolutely nothing. Danny Dyer plays John Smith, the London cabbie and longtime bigamist whose double life flitting between wives Denise Van Outen and Sarah Harding threatens to come apart at the seams. Neil Morrissey plays the hapless downstairs neighbour. Christopher Biggins and Lionel Blair set the cause of gay rights back 30 years as a pair of screaming queens. A frankly mind-boggling array of second-rate panto talent – June Whitfield, Russ Abbott, Liza Goddard, Rolf Harris, Su Pollard, Cliff bloody Richard – pop up to lend a hand.
The result is not so much a film, more a nerve-shredding flashback to the darkest days of pre-PC British comedy, a time when chappies were cheeky, gays were terrifying and women divided their time between nagging and shrieking. Run for the exit.