STAGE REVIEW: An Evening with Aggers and Bumble - at the Forum Theatre, Malvern, Wednesday, February 7, 2018.

YOU often see the question posed about who you feel would make excellent companions to have sat round your dinner table.

I’ve just found two more perfect guests I would be more than happy to share a few hours with reflecting on life, sporting heroes and villains, and being regaled with hugely entertaining recollections of mishaps and mirth in the pursuit of success in sport.

Both Aggers and Bumble - Jonathan Agnew and David Lloyd - have been masters of their arts in the world of cricket and now, long after their playing days were over, they are the masters of amusingly reflecting on what they have seen and done.

Evenings with Aggers have been entertaining audiences, mainly comprising cricket followers, for around five years now. Others who have joined him have been Geoffrey Boycott, Sunil Gavaskar and Graeme Swann but here he is now with cricket’s hugely popular, larger-than-life maverick character, the veritable Bumble.

Anyone who has watched television coverage of the big matches in recent years will know of Bumble’s wisdom and wit, and some of the wild and wacky stunts he carries out, while Aggers is a hugely popular voice on radio’s Test Match Special… so it’s no wonder this event was sold out some time ago.

And the pair didn’t disappoint one little bit.

Our lad from Accrington brought tears of laughter to the eyes - especially when recalling being raised in back-to-backs, with one outside loo to be shared by 20, and being last in line for the Friday night bath!

“I wrote a book called Last in the Tin Bath’, Bumble told his enthralled audience and Aggers. “Friday night was bath night - tin bath in front of the fire. Dad was first in, then Uncle Eric. Well, that’s who I was told he was. We only saw him on Friday night’s. Then it was my turn to go - last in the bath”.

Memories of considerable cricketing characters were recalled with ease, and with quite a bit of warmth and gratitude - especially those who had helped shape his career with Lancashire and England.

And some of the bigger laughs came when recalling how one half of Australia’s terrifying pace duo of Thommo and Lillee, Jeff Thomson, had attempted to re-shape parts of his body by delivering a 90mph missile into a sensitive area of his anatomy.

No helmets, face-guards or body padding in those days - mock horror on Bumble’s face - as he remembered being left doubled up in pain and eventually helped back to the dressing room.

It obviously left quite an ‘impression’ on Bumble, who recalled: “The usual loudspeaker announcement in those days was - ‘Is there a doctor on the ground?’ - but this time the announcer said: ‘Is there a welder on the ground!?’ The ball had shattered my box!” Which he duly produced.

Bumble and the Sky cricket team enjoy baiting each other with what is often schoolboy humour and pranks, and Aggers, although mainly playing the interviewer on stage, also recalled some of the tricks he and others have played on Test Match Special colleagues.

And can any cricket lover ever forget how he and Brian Johnston got themselves in a right pickle - into virtual corpse mode, in that wonderful 1991 commentary about the Ian Botham being unable to get his leg over? With Johnston pleading: "Aggers, will you please stop it."

It opened the second half and no matter how many times you hear it you are still compelled to laugh out loud.

Full of warmth, wit and wonderful memories A and B’s evening is hugely entertaining - an event to cherish. Fingers crossed they are back on the patch in the near future.

And by the way, that dinner invite is still on the table…