As much fun as it is to review some bleak drama set in Grimsby, I have a confession. I'm a closet laugher. I know it's sinful and I'm thinking of serious theatre the whole time. But this dream-team is like eating a freezer-full of Magnums - it won't make you and more scintillating at dinner parties but it's fantastically pleasurable all the same.

The Oxford Revue have a weight of expectation that could crush a small elephant herd due to its Python alumni among others. Yet this is a revitalised team that excel at short bursts of absurdity. Sketches on obscure phobias punctuate the action, including a father scared of anything unfamiliar including his daughter's new teddy bear. Cue Handel's Messiah.

At their best the Revue are surreally, savagely hilarious, creating a musical filled with cannibalistic walruses '1st-class hobos' who lament the lives of tramp passengers drinking Chianti in executive carriages on trains. The West End should take note. Their one shortcoming, however, is in the execution of longer sketches. Compared with the vibrancy of those highlights, such longer stints can drag in places. Nonetheless the group display that rare gift of flitting from the absurd to creating situations generating a unanimous nod of recognition.

The Imps are fast becoming an institution to rival the Revue with their already legendary Monday-night Wheatsheaf sets having the atmosphere of political rallies without the intimidating flags in terms of unabashed enthusiasm. Although the role-plays lose their freshness after a couple of consecutive performances, the sheer ingenuity of its members can still surprise on occasions.

Although this is ensemble work and the standard of each individual performance is unfalteringly high, the relentlessly inventive Jon Dick and Rose Heiney are particularly mesmerising in both their Imps and Revue appearances. However whether the O'Reilly is an appropriate forum for improvisational, audience-involving performance remains to be seen. Ultimately what is so admirable in both teams is the unassuming impression they leave - unpretentious students writing and rehearsing in beer gardens who don't strive to make some grand metaphysical statement but quite simply relish the thought of inducing laughter. This reviewer was outed from the comedy closet, in the words of that most famous of fez-wearers, jus' like that.