ALAN B'stard, the MP everyone loves to hate, is in Malvern this week in a new stage production, The New Statesman, based on the original TV series.

Rik Mayall's B'stard is older, a little grey around the temples, but as irresistibly wicked as ever.

The unprincipled B'stard has ditched the Tories to join New Labour but don't think for a minute that he's gone soft. He is still the same impeccably pin-striped, selfish, cruel and arrogant B'stard he always was.

The stage show, written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, creators of the TV series, is up-to-the-minute comedy.

At it's premiere in London earlier this year there were lots of references to Blair's imminent departure from Number 10, sexual shenanigans in Westminster, rich Russians and Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Alan B'stard is one of Mayall's most memorable and anarchic comic creations. On stage he struts his stuff with panache and, inevitably, there's lots of leering, groin thrusting and sexual innuendo.

When the play began I wasn't sure that a TV comedy that was a huge success in the late eighties and early nineties would work on stage in the 21st Century but Mayall carries along the ludicrous plot line involving shady Arabs, Condoleeza Rice and the Trillionaires Club with his usual over-the-top style.

With his own unique slant on everything from single mothers to school dinners and his hilarious disregard for political correctness B'stard is back and politics is funny again.

Sue vickers