A re-creation of Round the Horne, complete with plausible replicas of Kenneth Williams, Betty Marsden et al, was hugely successful at this address; so there’s no reason why this trawl through the lives and work of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore shouldn’t do equally well. Kevin Bishop can grin and mug as goofily as Dud and even bang out Beethoven parodies on the piano, and the laidback Pete of Tom Goodman-Hill can barely say a sentence without finding some absurdity in it.

Yet I laughed less often, perhaps partly because of the format of Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde’s play. The pretence is that Moore is being interviewed by a chatshow host who, in Alexander Kirk’s fake-cheery performance, resembles a wooden Wogan or Russell Harty’s stupid cousin. As a result, Dud is for once the centre of attention, even when a chaotic, insulting Pete invades the proceedings; but, also as a result, there’s some clunky, background-setting conversation and a scattershot feel to Owen Lewis’s production.

There’s a mention of Beyond the Fringe, and on come a comically bleating Alan Bennett and a surprisingly prim Jonathan Miller as well as our principals, to perform their end-of-the-world sketch first in Britain and then, with some ad-libbing by Pete added, in America. Bits of Not Only . . . But Also are similarly included, as are some of Pete and Dud’s improvisations and their increasingly awkward, troubled private conversations.

Goodman-Hill’s Cook, initially the smoothest of men as well as the nimblest of comic operators, gradually deteriorates into a slovenly wreck who means it when he says he lost all his ambition at 24 because ambition “leaves no room for creative wasting of time, which I’m rather good at”. This alienates Bishop’s Dud, who not only has ambition but a work rather than shirk ethic. And when a tipsy, jealous Cook sneers that his old friend ’s drive derives from his club foot and small stature, it’s no longer funny.

Still, the evening can indeed be funny as well as cursory and a bit shallow. A number in which the Robin Hood gang celebrate Alan A’Dale by singing nothing but his name should be cut, as should some of the tinkling on the keys; but the Pete’n’Dud number in which our cloth-capped heroes recall fending off an amorous Sophia Loren and Greta Garbo works well, as do several one-liners. “How was it meeting the Queen?” asks a TV factotum. “She’s a lot taller than she looks on her stamps,” comes the reply. That time I laughed.

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