Last Thursday was, it seemed, a thoroughly appropriate day to see the West End hit The Play What I Wrote (now on tour and at the Oxford Playhouse until September 20).

At lunchtime, I bumped into a young man rolling a monkey-nut along a street in Central London with his nose. At the Playhouse in the evening, the programme told me it was mid-August, and a lady in the row in front found that her ticket was for a seat that staff had removed. Could things get any more surreal?

Well yes they could, and they did.The Play What I Wrote is a wonderful reminder of why many millions of Britons in the 1970s used to spend hours in front of the telly watching Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, with their own special brand of humour and their ability to persuade the great and the good of the time to agree to take a part in one of Ernie's extravagant and ill-written dramas.

But this is not a simple tribute show. To some extent at least it is an exploration of the nature of double acts, with the invaluable help of a third party, Toby Sedgwick, who plays every other part from theatre manager to a duck in a tutu. Only in the second half are we shown one of Ernie's masterpieces -- set in the Bastille during the French Revolution of 1759 (Ernie was never great at history), complete with a mystery guest as his co-star.

So the audience is presented with a play within a play within a play. Joseph Alessi (the Eric figure) and Ben Keaton (Ernie, though, if anything, he looks more like Eric) are a pair of unsuccessful comedians whose only remaining hope lies in putting on a Morecambe and Wise show -- a plan that appeals to Ben but not to Joe. This Ben and Joe double act has all the quick-fire exchanges and dreadful jokes of their heroes, along with some excellent visual punning and a few lines that would never have found their way past the Beeb's censors 30 years ago.

Ernie's play is superb and last week's mystery guest, the ballet dancer Adam Cooper, played along valiantly in his role as the Scarlet Pimpernel. Ben gave himself all the best parts, relegating Joe to that of the Comtesse de Toblerone. But for me the funniest lines of all belong to Toby Sedgwick who has a hilarious long-running story of how he promised his old mum he'd one day play his harmonica on stage.

Slickly done, with some extraordinary exploding scenery, The Play What I Wrote has been worth the wait. But don't be surprised if you end up wondering where you are and just what is going on.

PAULA CLIFFORD