UPDATED EVERY THURSDAY Thursday 8th April 2004 All content © New Journal Enterprises, 2004

REVIEWS   BY DAN CRESSEY Murray Lachlan Young MURRAY LACHLAN YOUNG – Old Red Lion Poet Murray Lachlan Young briefly shot to fame in the 1990s amid claims that he had been signed to the EMI record label for £1 million. Young was hailed as the ‘Million Pound Poet’ and newspapers fell over themselves to claim that poetry was ‘the new rock-and-roll’. It appears that it wasn’t as Young is now performing to about 30 people in a small room above a pub in Islington rather than selling out Wembley Arena. The past few years have been spent struggling with what he calls “a colossal case of writer’s block”. This was apparently overcome when he saw a toupee rolling across the road, which inspired him to write one of tonight’s poems: ‘Tumbleweed Toupee’. Young’s performances are not for the faint hearted, encompassing as they do Robert Kilroy-Silk in drag, hand made wooden sex toys and comments concerning the sexual preferences of Tony Curtis. And those items appear before we even reach what he calls ‘The Dark Section’ of the show. But it is in these dark sections that Young is at his most entertaining. His satirical digs are much funnier when they foray into slightly edgier territory. While he is genuinely likeable he occasionally strays dangerously close to schoolboy humour – I could have well done without the ode to the scrotum read in a ham Scottish accent after the style of Robert Burns. But when Young is in full flow with his old classics like ‘I’m Being Followed by the Rolling Stones’ and ‘Simply Everyone Is Taking Cocaine’ you can see why EMI might have thought it a good idea to give him large amount of money. The best of his new material is equally good. If poetry hasn’t proven to be the new rock and roll we should be grateful. It means we don’t have to go all the way to Wembley but can instead see Young in all his brilliance up close in Islington. Dan Cressey n Old Red Lion 020 7837 7816 Until Sunday April 11 top