JUST as the Fool is the wisest character in Shakes-peare's comedies, so Ali G in chatshow mode pretends to be dim when he's being pin sharp. Like Dennis Pennis and Mrs Merton he could dupe his surprised, off-guard celebrities.

Now Ali G, alias Oxbridge smart alec Sacha Baron Cohen, has followed the fallow brick road from television to film, a cruel bedfellow for comedic talent with a big ego and not such a big budget.

Steve Coogan just about got away with his transfer from small to big screen in The Parole Officer last year, reprising his dork act perfected in Alan Partridge's self-satisfied interview technique.

More often, somewhere in the transition British comedians lose their subversive streak and originality and resort to tired childish gags involving the size of their third leg, their bodily functions and chasing sex.

Once it was innocent Carry On, double entendres at the double; now it is carrion, the rotten stench of English schoolboy humour and Roy 'Chubby' Brown sauce with a second layer of American gross-out dumb comedy.

For Ali G Indahouse, Sacha Baron Cohen's mock-American homeboy from the West Staines Massive moves from interviewer to central character for an over-stretched sitcom in which he ends up making much more of a fool of himself than those around him, and so the move backfires.

Cohen's character, now too well known to play tricks, may never recover from such crass self-destruction, his irreverence blighted, his subversion shattered, his soul sold. And for what? The cheeky but tame Viz-style tale of the Staines gangsta being elected to Parliament (hence the film title), where Ali G prescribes herbal medicine all round: a dope when he used to be a dupe.

One Ali made a famous comeback but Ali G? He has left himself on the ropes. What a fool.

Updated: 09:49 Friday, March 22, 2002