send-up

There's no plot to speak of, just a string of Mel Brooks/Leslie Nielsen send-ups thrown round the original Scream team's winning formula.

The humor of the Martha Graham send-ups and vaudevillian sketches felt dated, despite the dancers' best efforts.

The Family Guy Star Wars send-ups are Blue Harvest (A New Hope), Something Something Something Darkside (The Empire Strikes Back) and It's A Trap (Return Of The Jedi).

Series such as Nigella Bites and a run of Forever Summer with Nigella helped make her piping hot property, but she did have to put up with some wickedly funny send-ups from Ronni Ancona.

Those far-sighted enough to have snapped up Overlook Press's 2005 re-issue of the Mortdecai Trilogy--Kyril Bonfiglioli's powerfully comedic high-octane send-ups of the bon-viveur-cum-sleuth detective story--may have hoped that this fine-tuned souffl&233; chef of an author would turn out a steak-and-the-works banquet of a book.

Bremner, Bird and Fortune: The Last Show Before the Recovery (7.00pm) Satirical send-ups and sketches.

From the MPs' allowances scandal to the cult of celebrity chefs and the Sachsgate affair, the three - with the help of Pauline McLynn and Frances Barber - provide a selection of satirical send-ups and sketches dealing with the issues that have been in the spotlight for the past six months.

It offers "a side-splitting evening of clever send-ups and faithful tributes."

Born in Seaton Delaval in 1926, he burst upon the literary scene with send-ups of the Bond-type characters which were taking up so much book and screen time.

An East Coaster by birth, Shock wears his Bay Area boho-hippie cred on his sleeve more than ever on Fear, sliding from his standard, piano-driven send-ups of rap scene ego-tripping ("Everything is Beautiful") to intense poetic theses on blood quantum ("Who's Clean?") and the alternating fetishization and loathing of mixed-race families and children on the title track's chorus ("don't they make a good couple/a body double's way happy at the fact that they making DNA copies/dead on each others lips, dead on each others nose/I hope the baby got ten toes.")

This time Leno and Letterman, et al., took care of things in nightly send-ups, a sport that lasted for weeks.

But my send-ups got me in trouble, when I volunteered for the ATS in the 1940s for not being serious enough.

The book's showpieces are a handful of narrative satires in the first section: send-ups of academia's self-seriousness and the assumptions that underlie it.

Other songs veer closer to campy Mad magazine send-ups. Live numbers are the best, such as Trixie's star turn on "I Will Always Love Booze."

Yes, LipService are back with (judging by the story-book set and the addition of a third actor) a bigger kitty to spend but thankfully many of the signature ingredients that have earned previous literary send-ups a devoted following.