Come to a show called Gay Witch Sex Cult, and you don’t expect a host like this. Kaelan Trough is an estate agent, suited up, smug and prepping a gender reveal party for his new baby. OK, the baby will be raised by Kaelan and his partner Jeremy: gay, we can account for. But witch sex cult? Well, we mustn’t talk about that, says Andrew Doherty’s camp and narcissistic alter ego, who’d rather crow about how much sex he’s having, and reveal his misogyny in dismissive remarks about the baby’s surrogate mum.
You can’t help but love him, though. Doherty (former double-act partner of This Is Going to Hurt star Ambika Mod) has created a compelling comic monster here: ditzy, self-absorbed but also puppyish and vulnerable, not least to the occult forces at play once the backstory to the party is divulged. In episodic flashback, Kaelan recounts a boat trip to a deserted island, ferryman uttering gnomic prophecies en route. There, a row of lonely trees look uncannily like women, an axe-wielding maniac runs amok and a cave is littered with the skeletons of human babies. Folk-horror red flags all, which our host is usually too dim – too busy preening or gossiping – to notice, far less piece together into a coherent whole.
