Tim Key: The Slutcracker

Edinburgh Comedy Award 2009 winner Tim Key brings his offbeat poetry show The Slutcracker for a two-week residency at the Soho Theatre. You may remember Key from Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe and Newswipe programmes, in which the well-dressed 33-year-old deadpanned succinct verses about greedy financiers ("The banker had swan and caviar around his chops"), Gordon Brown's glass eye and Deal or No Deal. A glimpse at Key on Twitter will show you what he's all about: "Some girls. Were having a chat. A pervert. Stared at them. / Last night Matt got in a punch up. It all started when he thumped a Chinese girl. / Oscar had an affair with Ray's wife (Mae). They were ever so careful about it. They only saw each other twice in 15 years." But of course, that's only half of it, for the joy of the idiosyncratic and often banal poetry really comes in its eccentric, slow delivery, which has you in stitches and on the edge of your seat in equal measures. Key is a star in the making, with films, books and a TV series already gracing his CV - which contains a stint on the Cambridge Floodlights Tour in 2001 (after he successfully pretended to be a student). The Slutcracker is "an indefinably crackers hour" (The Independent) with "beauty that peeps through the silliness" (The Guardian).