Edinburgh works like a variety brain drain during the Festival month. Stand-ups, singers and acrobats who don't go north usually go on holiday, meaning there's little for stay-in-town Londoners during the dog days of August.

Three cautious cheers then for the Roundhouse for staging a month-long variety show, which I should tell you right away is very much at the fetish end of the scale (don't take children or sensitive souls). Also, the venue is not ideal, but you can't grumble at six shows a week, added to which Friday night's eight acts racked up a respectable (for the time of year) hit-miss ratio of 50-50.

Among the hits were Frank Sanazi and Spymonkey, who cabaret regulars will know well. If you don't, they are worth catching. Spymonkey, a mixture of Monty Python and porn-movie spoofs, did two short turns, including their extreme pole-dancing send-up that mocks poor Britney Spears. Dressing as crusaders and using Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, it epitomises the cultural racketeering that is their style.

Sanazi sang excerpts from his Hitler-meets-Sinatra show, Songs for Swingin' Dictators, including Third Reich and Strangers on My Flight. The improbability of crooners and dictators is comedy gold, and all Sanazi's references to Sadami Davies Jnr and Osama Bin Crosby raised hearty laughs. How you wish you could have been at the recent sale of Hitler watercolours that Sanazi disrupted with royal party crasher Aaron Barschak, yelling: "These aren't Hitlers, they're Mussolinis!"

Other hits include the fetish fireeater Lucifire, ace hula-hooper Kalki Hula Girl and aerialist Marjo Nantel. The evening was compered by Miss Behave, a Betty Boop-alike Mistress of Ceremonies who's billed as the last female sword swallower. Her blade and chair leg guzzling will make you squirm, although many will find her S&M act a bit try-hard. Others will doubt her choice of filler acts - singer Caroline Nin was a woeful Marlene wannabe, Lyndall Nantel a rubbish trapeze artist, while the bottle juggler is best forgotten. Roll on September.

Until 24 August (0844 482 8008; www.roundhouse.org.uk)