"WHAT SONG SHALL WE USE to get the show started?" mused James Sherwood, poised over his keyboard and primed to burst into voice.  It's a fair question to ask, when your show's called Songs of Music and your flyer advertises "just the musical bits" of last-year's sell-out comedy gig.  Trouble is, by this point, he was already 15 minutes into his 50-minute set... and he went on to spend another five of the minutes he had left running through a list of what he wasn't going to sing.

Perhaps I'm being a little unfair.  He had done one number right at the start, an entertaining commentary on feeling happy despite bad weather which had the whole audience singing along.  And the tune he finally brought out - an hilarious, premature anthem for the end of the Bush era - also went down a storm.  I just found myself wishing, since the songs he did work in were so successful, that he'd found space for a few more.

Still, the extended links were entertaining enough, endearingly presented by the slightly rumpled Sherwood.  He'd read his audience well - bringing out a knowingly intellectual theme which clearly chimed with the room.  An extended section where he ruined classic songs by "correcting" their grammar was a particular highlight.  And one of the best-developed numbers was an unashamed nerd-fest, full of references to mathematics and science; I was far more pleased than I should have been to understand it all.

Sherwood can actually sing - he turns on his full-belt performance for the most amusingly inappropriate of lyrics - and his own compositions are a pleasure too.  Never before had I appreciated the sexual innuendo now so apparent in cricket commentary, nor quite seen the damning-with-faint-praise undertone of singing "You are so beautiful... to me".  There were deft recurring themes and the whole show was well-received by a credibly-sized crowd, with only one number (ironically, the show's title track) proving a bit of a dud.

With writing credits including Radio 4's The News Quiz and appearances on Loose Ends, Sherwood's far from a struggling newcomer - but he is trying to break into an already-crowded field.  Festival stalwarts Kit and the Widow are putting in their annual appearance down at the Edinburgh Academy, while Tim FitzHigham's brought back his popular homage to Flanders & Swann.  It will take a few more hits before we can mention James Sherwood in that kind of company - but right now, this good-value show in an unusual, city-centre venue makes a more than worthy warm-up for an evening on the Fringe.