23 November 2025
Former footballer-turned-comedian Mick Miller first appeared on our TV screens 50 years ago on the talent show, New Faces, and won his heat. This week he performed a three minute spot at The Royal Variety Performance in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales and completely stole the show from under the nose of every other artist the bill. His non-stop parade of carefully crafted one-liners and zingers landed every time, the well-heeled audience rolling in the aisles and loggia boxes of the Royal Albert Hall. No smut, nothing offensive, just great observational comedy and very clever word play. It proved to be a sparkling diamond set from a diamond geezer. And that result certainly wasn’t on my bingo card when I saw the confirmed RVP line up.
By its very nature, this annual gig, a fundraiser for the Royal Variety Charity, always throw up some surprises. Some artists – especially comedians – buckle under the pressure. Last year there was tumbleweed blowing across the stage as Katherine Ryan floundered like a fish out of water. This year it was the turn of Tom Davis, with a collection of Dad stories, who seemed ill at ease, perhaps thrown by the gravitas of the occasion. It certainly didn’t help that he had to follow host Jason Manford’s hilarious opening monologue with stories of how his decidedly middle class children offend his working class upbringing and shame him constantly in front of his brother – a plumber with a “proper job”. He was hilarious and proved to be a supreme and confident commander of the stage .
This was the fifth year in a row that the RVP – watched by over 152 million TV viewers worldwide, making it the most successful and longest running entertainment show in the world – has been staged at the Royal Albert Hall, and I can’t see it moving anywhere else; the majesty of the building really suits the occasion, and ITV Studios, who make the annual show on behalf of the Royal Variety Charity, are to be congratulated for their epic use of lighting to best use the dome-shaped tiered auditorium to stunning effect.
This was easily the slickest and most entertaining RVP in years – it will look a bobby dazzler on TV in late December, thanks in part to a well balanced group of artists and shows taking part. There really is something for everyone.
Award winning theatre director Luke Shepherd is one of the fastest rising stars (his & Juliet is still running on Broadway and Starlight Express at Wembley’s Troubador Theatre) and he was represented in this show by two of the best Musical Theatre excerpts of the night from his other current West End productions. Paddington Bear stole everyone’s heart – including mine – when the ensemble cast of Paddington the Musical, recently opened at the Savoy theatre, parted to reveal the all-singing and dancing marmalade munching ball of fun (I had exactly the same heart-in-throat moment in Disney’s Frozen when Kristoff’s reindeer, Sven, cantered onto stage and blinked his doe-eyes at me). And Bob Geldoff (together with Midge Ure, Gary Kemp and Roger Taylor) got a rare RVP standing ovation for introducing the cast of Shepherd’s hit Just For One Day performing a medley from the show. It was an extended item that also included moving testimony from former nurse Dame Claire Bertschinger and the news journalist Michael Buerk – both also shown on screen in his original BBC famine news coverage – about the impact of Band Aid and the subsequent Live Aid concert. It proved to a moving and highly emotional act one closer.
Expect to see a national tour or at the very least a London season at Sadler’s Wells Peacock Theatre announced the day after the TVP TV broadcast for Japanese acrobatic dance troupe Airfootworks, who brilliantly fused street dance and horizontal-bar swinging on a simple frame to stunning effect – this could be a breakout moment for them.
Vocal highlights were Jessie J, singing I’ll Never Know Why, about a close friend’s suicide, and Madness – it is mad to learn it was their RVP debut – who had people on their feet dancing to an infectious Nutty Boys medley, including the inevitable “Our House” and “Baggy Trousers”. They were pure gold and played live. Another big plus in my book.
As host – the MC changes every year – Jason Manford proved to be a genial, safe air of hands and led from the front in a great song celebrating the great British panto, with great guest support (in full panto drag) from Christopher Biggins (celebrating appearing in his 50th panto this year), Su Pollard (40th), Leslie Joseph (35th) and recent panto newcommer Dr Ranj (the uncredited lyricist cleverly rhymed flange with Ranj in a moment of ingenuity that would surely have thrilled Sir Tim Rice).
Fans of Les Miserables will certainly be impressed with the show’s largest ever finale since the show was first staged in 1912. Cameron Mackintosh and composers Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil introduced hundreds of cast members from across the UK who staged the first amateur productions this year to mark the 40th anniversary of the show, plus members of the international arena tour cast and the recent Paris production, singing in French. I’m not sure what having six Jean Valjeans and six Javerts each singing a line from “Bring Him Home” or “Stars “added to the occasion but “Master of the House” with Thénardier, Madame Thénardier and hundreds of guests was certainly a loud and lively affair and the RAH was a riot of red white and blue that is sure to look spectacular on TV.
A vintage RVP year indeed.
