Paul Merton's Silent Clowns St George's Hall The popular comic delivered exactly what it said on the tin - a salute to the greats of the silent era.

Almost evangelical in his zeal for the comedic greats, Merton played a modest part in proceedings, allowing the considerable talents of Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel & Hardy and Lloyd to once again shine from the silver screen.

You may have seen Merton's TV show, and you can now read his book, but watching some of the greats in action in some of their lesser shown works with a live, laughing audience added to an already excellent feast of entertainment.

Like every evangelist, Merton will have been pleased by the mixed nature of his audience - I suspect the oldest may well have seen the films first time around, while the youngest was probably not around when the Have I Got News For You regular began his BBC series on the silent age. And it was the belly laughter from the youngsters during Laurel & Hardy's last silent film Angora Love (1929) that affirmed the greats will never be forgotten.

The first half of the show featured extracts from Chaplin in a film set at a fair, including a hilarious scene in a hall of mirrors, Keaton in Sherlock Junior (1924) performing a death-defying stunt routine on the handlebars of a motorbike, and Angora Love, with added extra bits such as scenes from a film of one of Chaplin's rivals driving a car 'powered' by a giant magnet.

The second half of the show featured Safety Last (1923), undoubtedly Harold Lloyd's finest film, and some of the extraordinary stunts - such as the iconic image of a boater-wearing, bespectacled Lloyd dangling from a clock 12 floors above the streets of Los Angeles - still have the capacity to make the audience gasp in wonderment.

As if the film fare and Merton's reverence did not already contribute to an entertaining night, the live piano-playing polish of Neil Brand accompanying each clip gave the sense of actually being in a cinema circa 1925. Another added extra - Merton needs to get the DVD out! - was Brand's five-minute masterclass in constructing music to silent film.

The loud applause at the end as Merton and Brand introduced giant pictures of each of the comics was testament to the fact that silence is indeed golden.