Sunday night’s new sketch show The Ginge,  the Geordie and the Geek was a blast from  the more recent past. That joke about James Blunt’s terrible singing, for instance, was soooo 2005, but there’s no denying it still gets a laugh (sorry, James). Comedy trio Graeme Rooney (Ginge), Paul Charlton (Geordie) and Kevin O’Loughlin (Geek) were discovered at the Edinburgh Festival, and evidently have their material well honed through live experience. New sketch shows often suffer with scenes that linger on long past the punch line,  but nothing outstayed its welcome on Sunday.

Several quick-fire, one-laugh sketches were interspersed with material that could justify a longer running time. The 1950s spies trying to infiltrate “The Females”, for instance, is the kind of thing Armstrong and Miller used to do, but the three Gs made it their own. Like excitable kids let loose in the BBC costume department, they also made much use  of furry animal suits: there was the victim reconciliation  between Mr Pig and Mr Wolf and a recurring sketch about thuggish seagulls that got better with each repetition.

The Fast Show was meant to be the meta-sketch show  to end all sketch shows, and that broadcast its last episode in 1997, so what does that make this? Old-fashioned? Absolutely. Uncool? Probably. But will it make you laugh? Oh, yes.