You might have thought this one-off comeback for The Fast Show all a bit cynical. In the seven years since their last television show together, Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson and Co have seen their brand of wilfully repetitive character comedy refined into something nation-conqueringly huge by Little Britain. And here they were, on Sunday night, getting some 2,000 fans to pay up to £50 to see a show called Shamelessly Plugging the DVD.

Well, if there was anything cynical about the evening, I was too busy laughing like a muppet to spot it. What a delight this was: a two-hour-plus reunion with the catchphrase-spouting creations that changed the terrain of the TV sketch show in the Nineties. And a cheering amount of it was entirely new. Like the original, this was uneven but compensatingly bountiful.

Higson, the in-house grown-up, explained how the entire original team was back together – except for Caroline Aherne, “because she is, tragically, in Manchester”. But the mighty John Thomson returned, hosting an edition of Jazz Club with Paul Weller and Roger Taylor, of Queen. Richard E. Grant appeared in a sketch with Arabella Weir; David Tennant was tactlessly pressed about Billie Piper by the “suits you!” men: “Did you give her one, sir?”

There were scrappy moments. The guest-star bits were clunky, as guest-star bits are wont to be; the curtain-call was clumsy; monologues, such as Higson’s fabulously naff office-joker Colin Hunt or Whitehouse’s distressed drunk Rowley Birkin, came off better than the multi-character sketches. Some of the clips they showed overshadowed anything on stage.

But you don’t judge this like any other live show – it’s the postscript to a comedy institution, and a more full-blooded one than anyone can have expected. It was staged inventively – characters emerged through the floor, from the balcony, or in the case of Mark Williams’s drunken businessman, in the auditorium. And the performances were feisty and fluent. Simon Day, in particular, excelled as his mouthy Cockneys – giving the curly-haired Billy Bleach a one-man play set in a chip shop, and letting Dave Angel, Eco Warrior, recount a night of brainstorming and sex on the snooker table with Al and Tipper Gore.

Pretty much every running character reappeared apart from Whitehouse’s “brilliant!” slacker. And if you didn’t know your Ed Winchester from your Swiss Toni, your Arthur Atkinson from your Tommy Cockles, this reunion really wasn’t aimed at you anyway. A joyful return.

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