Crammed into the increasingly clammy upstairs room of Gardies, surrounded by strangers and with high expectations but a suspicion that everything might just turn out to be a bit rubbish, I had the feeling that watching the recording of CamFM’s comedy panel show, The Fo’ Show, might be worryingly similar to a swap. However, my fears were proven to be ill-founded as The Fo’ Show was both very funny and well-suited to the venue.

With wittily-titled rounds such as ‘Gangster’s Paradise Lost’ and ‘Holla at my Bluff’, in which the teams had to guess the correct definition of a word from Urban Dictionary, The Fo’ Show avoided the peril of imitating professional panel shows by possessing its own distinctive style. The show charmingly juxtaposed popular culture with the banal and the highbrow with haikus about fast food, alongside parodies of lad culture and puns about Bonjela. There were, however, some less successful rounds: the one word story in particular was a little too incoherent to match up to the standard set by some of the other challenges.

The panellist who came closest to having any sort of ‘panel show persona’ was Matt Lloyd with his Eeyore-like delivery and seeming annoyance at being part of the show at all. However, this didn’t feel forced and added variety to a generally strong line-up of panellists. Pierre Novellie was consistently funny throughout the recording, and received some of the best laughs of the night, although his repeated references to squid as the “spiders of the sea” is an image which will stick with this committed arachnophobe for far too long. As the only panellist making their The Fo’ Show debut, Siân Docksey understandably seemed a little unsure but excelled in the rounds involving any preparation beforehand; in particular her contribution to the poetry/rap battle was hilarious and impressive.

Overall The Fo’ Show was great fun with a high level of good quality jokes – a promising start to CamFM’s Lent schedule.

Listen to The Fo’Show on 97.2 FM or online at www.camfm.co.uk on Thursday 20th  January at 9pm, or use Cam FM’s listen again feature for up to six weeks after this.

Charlotte Jeffreys blogs about radio at http://blogs.varsity.co.uk/vulture