Joking that the lucrative, entertainment juggernaut that is Taskmaster is his 'side hustle' to The Horne Section, Alex Horne's band operates in a niche space between cult and mainstream. Each of the bowling shirt-clad six-piece have other, more high-profile gigs taking up most of their year. But the group has its own returning sitcom on Channel 4 and a regular podcast, ensuring that their audience is a tricky mix of the invested and the uninitiated, with gags needing to cater to both.

With Horne as puckish master of ceremonies, conducting the whole theatre in a ridiculous ceilidh, the first half of the show is a slightly leisurely and uncertain affair, taking its time to introduce Joe Auckland, Mark Brown, Will Collier, Ben Reynolds and Ed Sheldrake through the impish manipulation of familiar pop hits. Yet if the overall edifice is rackety, with plenty of space for improvisation, the band and the original numbers are impressively tight. Auckland and Collier pun endearingly as singing horses Jorge and Jesus, despite sporting rubbery equine masks, while a spoof of The Village People's ‘YMCA’ affords a hilarious visual climax to the opening half.

Having incorporated the crowd from the start, making a virtue of the bits that don't always go quite to plan, Horne is masterful post-interval in conducting a game plucked straight out of Taskmaster, before soliciting punchlines from the stalls for a couple of open-ended jokes. Into this daft, inclusive atmosphere, trumpeter Auckland receives the spotlight for a sentimental song about his daughter that turns out to be anything but. And the sextet bring the house down with the seemingly inoffensive but snigger-inducing, gloriously rude number ‘Grandaddy’.

The Horne Section's Hit Show tours until November 2025; reviewed at King's Theatre, Glasgow, as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.