Toast of London

I like to laugh. Laughter is one of the best things in the world, making your limited time on this planet approaching oblivion into a fest of fun, and television is a mine of the stuff. All tastes are catered for – from the absurd to the observational, everyday to very dark humour and even if you’re not a fan of comedy, you could always try Sarah Millican. One of the best comedy shows on currently is Toast of London, which has just concluded its second series.

The show starts Matt Berry (of The IT Crowd and very under-appreciated Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace) on general hammy form as Steven Toast who, to quote from the official description, is ‘a middle-aged actor who spends more time dealing with his problems off stage than performing on it,’ although the tone is much more fun than that sounds. He is supported by a game of characters equally as strange as him – from his landlord and friend Ed Howser-Black (Robert Bathurst) to his notoriously homophobic actor nemesis Ray bloody Purchase (Harry Peacock) and his prostitute wife Mrs Purchase (Tracy-Ann Oberman).

The name of the game is pretty much surrealism, with the plot liable to lapse in any direction whenever it fancies – the only real constant is the voice-over session at the start with Clem Fandango (yes, I can hear you, Clem Fandango). Past episodes have featured Toast entertaining the daughter of the Nigerian ambassador, victim of a cruel plastic surgeon who made her look entirely like Bruce Forsyth with the exception of her left hand, and Toast ending up on the run from theatre- land enforcer Michael Ball (who has double the amount of blood in his body as that of a normal human) after losing to Andrew Lloyd Webber in a poker game, and this series has matched that easily – we’ve seen Toast step up to the plate as the second-best high winds actor in Britain after the leading actor dies, but needing to join the Freemasons before he does so, and getting competitive to win the Celebrities and Prostitutes Blow Football Tournament.

The script is razor sharp despite the level of randomness

It’s silly and very funny – it is never really possible to guess what’s coming next. A chat with Ed in the kitchen can evolve into a musical number at a manic pace, or it could be interrupted by John Nettles barging in to sell the animals he poached earlier that day (because that’s what out of work actors do). It plays up to it massively – it looks like a normal show, but it most definitely is not – it pays to go with the flow and just enjoy it.

The script, though, is razor sharp despite the level of randomness that it puts out. It is anchored by an incredible performance by Berry, adding an over-the-top personality and incredible likeability to Toast that makes watching him a load of fun. The show I could best compare it with would be Father Ted, something with which it shares a similar temperament and sense of humour, which is no surprise considering both were co-written by Arthur Matthews. I could throw around synonyms like a juggler with a thesaurus, but it is so daft that no amount of description could really sum it up adequately.

Although it is pretty much destined to end up a cult comedy (although a third series has just been commissioned, so there’s no excuse not to watch it), I recommend that you be one of those few lucky people who gets to experience it. If you have a sense of humour and a sense of fun, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll enjoy it. Be one of that select few – answer questions of Benedict Cumberbatch with a bemused ‘who?’ and smile a bit when you hear the phrase ‘release the nuclear weapons’ (because I assume that you, like I, lead a life where that gets bandied around quite a lot) – and you’ll be a lot better off for it. There’s a depressing amount of rubbish on the television – don’t miss this gem.