THEY'RE a tenacious bunch, the Ha Ha comedians. Their inaugural visit to The Grove last year (with Ha Ha Hamlet) yielded an audience so small you could have accommodated them in the ladies toilets.

But in that age-old tradition of "the show must go on" the cast ushered everyone forward and we just about made a couple of rows in the cavernous 780-seater venue.

On Monday the entertainers returned with their latest offering – Ha Ha Hitler – and 168 people enjoyed the show. No, they loved the show. They cried with merriment from beginning to end and wished they'd taken all their friends.

What more than these incredibly talented and original performers do to attract a larger audience ? What more, what can The Grove do to break through the cultural resistance that runs through the people of south Bedfordshire ?

The most shocking thing I was told this week was that a colleague recently took a group of friends from Leighton to the Dunstable theatre to see entertainer Roy Chubby Brown and the group were stunned. They didn't know The Grove existed!

Is Leighton Buzzard so remote and insular that there are people here who are unaware that in the next town there is one of Britain's newest and best equipped professional theatres offering concerts, plays, comedy acts, ballet, opera, children's shows, films, and a star-studded pantomime?

Ha Ha Hitler owed a lot to the irreverence first seen in Mel Brooks' The Producers and nurtured in TV shows like 'Allo, 'Allo.

War is no laughing matter but actually the only way to deal with its atrocities is to sometimes laugh.

All round clever Dick, performer Ben Langley, wrote, directed and starred in the comedy which was (very loosely) based on a famous movie.

For this was "the greatish escape" - a tale of cunning involving three RAF POWs, Tommy Bristol (Langley), Hilary Luton (Andrew Fettes) and Dick Ashton (Paul Taylor) – who plotted to tunnel out of their camp after entertaining visitor Adolf Hitler himself with a gang show.

Bristol was a bit of a mummy's boy who dreamt of getting back to Blighty while Luton was every inch the randy vicar and Ashton a very camp, camp inmate.

The show was rough and ready and gave the appearance of being written on a beer mat down Langley's local.

"If you really want the most out of tonight's show, lower your standards!" he told everyone when they were seated.

Ha Ha Hitler was, as the programme said "the story of three idiots and how they attempt their escape from a German occupied chateau in north-west France. That's it. There's no hidden meaning and no trap doors. If you do anything tonight then please hang your brains up with your coats before you come in".

But forget Chateau Plonke, this was a premier cru champagne, a cheeky little vintage that bubbled over with fizz. They like to run on a tank full of depreciation but the Ha Ha gang are high octane, five-star fun.

They work incredibly hard throughout a show, milking not only the story but also the interval and arrival for laughs. Langley even stayed on stage during the break to entertain with a ukulele and witty one-liners.

There was lots of audience participation making it, at times, more adult panto than war-time comedy. There was also the obligatory victimisation of some poor saps in the stalls and even a moment of unintentional violence when one of the cast accidentally threw a plastic crate out into the audience hitting a man on the head.

They had a token woman in this year's cast, Lizzie Frances, as French lass Sophie Ce Soir, but she added little to the story. It was the antics of the three men that stole the show.

Next up - they're gluttons for punishment - is Ha Ha Holmes! The Beast of The Blistervilles. Forget a night's telly and make a date.