By: Poppy Lepora

Angelos Epithemiou – an archetypal anorak nerd. A middle aged character permanently sporting his trademark oversized tie and Sainsbury’s bag. He also happens to own a burger van. The catalyst which has provided us with this quirky character is Shooting Stars, and we can see much of Reeves and Mortimer’s comedic style mirrored here.

Dan Renton Skinner is the man behind the anorak, a former member of the sketch group Dutch Elm Conservatoir.

Skinner’s creation is a curious character: in Angelos we can all see a person we know; the oddball who is partial to feeding the pigeons; the 40 year old nerd who still lives with mum. Epithemiou is that person, but multiplied by five.

Angelos gives us a forecast that his show will contain “three jokes, one magic, two dances and one impression”, he isn’t lying. As well as the aforementioned items we’re also treated to a musical section, an abundance of skin tight spandex, and formal introductions to his interesting collection of friends.

He plays up to the audience throughout the show, giving them the opportunity to interrogate him in ‘question time’ and brings one member on to the stage to play his quiz where one of the questions is: “What’s the best of the three main things?”

It’s all a bit nonsensical, but that’s his main charm. In the second half you can’t help but love DJ Angelos. The music section of the show doesn’t disappoint and Renton musters up many a laugh with his keyboard skills.

Angelos and Friends reads the title. His friends are in fact a fine selection of strange (and slightly scary) photo portraits which are presented to us on a power-point show. If it weren’t for the hilarity of the perfectly timed slide changes, then you would probably feel short-changed by the promise of seeing Angelos AND his chums.

The performance is ever so slightly tarnished by the repeated occurrence of Angelos’ dialogue cascading into a slur of incomprehensible mutterings, a well played speech impediment borders on being too intentional and occasionally steals some of the comedy out of his jokes. But with any luck we’ll be seeing a lot more of Angelos and his carrier bag of tricks in the future, with a few tweaks to the show, he’s set to be one name deservedly on everyone’s lips.