The last time I went to a big comedy gala type evening was last year at the Edinburgh fringe. There were about twelve of the most popular current stand-ups all on the same bill, doing around eight minutes each, and I remember thinking at the time that many of them could have happily exchanged acts with each other, so similar was much of the material.

This is not an accusation you can throw at any of the veteran performers from Stewart Lee’s celebration of the early days of alternative comedy: At Last! The 1981 Show. Norman Lovett is never going to dress up as Lenin and rant about muesli, any more than Stewart Lee would do a naked balloon dance or Alexei Sayle would stick a firework up his arse. Not all of it is especially hilarious, and some of it is nauseatingly grotesque, but what it can boast is an endless stream of variety, audacity, and most uniquely of all, imagination.

The show is split up into three sections, the first hosted by Arthur Smith, a good choice in many respects as he has been performing material he first wrote in 1981 for his entire career. Tonight he even does a pun about Marathon bars, the original name for Snickers prior to 1990! However, what he lacks in topicality he more than compensates for with wit and personality, most obviously on display during his joyous revival of the old chant: “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out! Out! Out!”

Also featuring in this first section is a welcome return of Saturday Live favourites, The Oblivion Boys, performing a routine that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in the music halls, filled as it is with witty wordplay and unashamedly corny gags. Norman Lovett’s ten minutes consist of him playing with bubble wrap, bags and shower caps, as well as delivering his unique and genuinely inventive offbeat material in as deadpan a fashion as possible. The section is rounded off by The Greatest Show on Legs doing a brilliant sketch about mime artists, littered with great visual gags, followed by the truly horrific naked balloon dance.

The act I’m most excited about is Alexei Sayle, and he comperes the second third of the show. The few flashes of stand-up he grants us remind everyone of just how great a performer he was, and he appears to really enjoy the return to the stage. He also gets to introduce his fellow early Comedy Store compere, Arnold Brown, who proves he’s still a master of dry one-liners. Other highlights of this section are a surreal sketch about Lenin, Pauline Melville as Edie the Radical Housewife doing some surprisingly incisive and cutting political gags, and Nigel Planer reviving Neil from The Young Ones, looking genuinely intimidated by a whistling audience member.

The final section sees Stewart Lee take to the stage. Even though back in 1981 he was actually only thirteen years old, he still fits seamlessly into the line-up, so influenced is his style by the era’s sensibilities. This is most obvious when he introduces Kevin McAleer, a comic who gets big laughs simply by standing silently in front of a picture of some startled owls for about five minutes, the sort of thing only a stand-up like Lee would attempt today. The show then comes to an end with Japanese cabaret act Frank Chickens, and Chris Lynam inserting a firework inside his anus.

I’m not sure I’d want to see all of these acts if they were doing their own full length show, but in the context of this evening, they all work really well. It was a real pleasure to see a comedy show where you honestly didn’t know what was going to happen next, and it would be great if more acts would emerge on the current scene that were willing to be as daring and individual as the performers we saw tonight.