HE may have been utterly assured in the confines of the TV studio for 11 years of Harry Hill's TV Burp and You’ve Been Framed voiceovers, but where does that leave his live shows after a seven-year hiatus from the road?

Harry hasn’t toured since Hooves in 2006, and after dipping his toe in the water at last summer’s Edinburgh Fringe, he is still regaining match fitness with the full-scale touring version of Sausage Time.

Beware the Eddie Izzard path: contrary to fashionable opinion, he has never been the same since diverting into politics, marathons, films and beard-growing, and his stand-up shows/ philosophy lectures have become as bloated as the arenas he now plays.

At least Harry Hill has stuck to theatres (and interestingly not a full one at that in York on Monday or Tuesday), and Hill still looks the same at 48: brothel creepers, slim suit, collars as if designed by Salvador Dali, pens in pocket, although the rata-tat-tat voice is more breathless.

The Hill schtick hasn’t moved on, and this is both good and bad news. He is a wonderful wordsmith, surreal yet sharp, always just too quick for his audience, observant, daft but pertinent too, and so the first half was a joy.

Unfortunately, he then cluttered the stage with assorted unfunny guests, descending into improvised clowning and consequent lulls in laughter as the satirical Broken Britain material limped along. Of course he is not over the Hill, but Sausage Time has ended up as a Cumberland when it was better as a chipolata.