Line up the green swizzle cocktails – because aristocratic buffoon Bertie Wooster is back.

Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense is a comedy, adapted from PG Wodehouse’s much-loved master-and-servant duo.

As it heads to Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre for a five-night run this week, Peep Show actor Robert Webb, who plays Bertie, says his character hasn’t quit the booze or smartened up his act.

He is still much in need of Jeeves’ Secret Hangover Concoction, a potentially fatal mixture involving raw egg and tabasco. And he still needs his disparaging valet in his eccentric world, to pick up the pieces.

Perfect Nonsense, written by brothers Robert and David Goodale, is based on Wodehouse’s 1938 novel The Code of the Woosters. As the action unfolds, the audience become the spectators of a play put on by Bertie, for which the long-suffering Jeeves has built the set and done most of the work.

Robert has just stepped back into the role after a stint in the show early last year.

“I hadn’t got the part out of my system so it’s great to be back,” said the 42-year-old who is perhaps best known as one half of the comedy double act Mitchell and Webb.

“The show is so brilliantly put together. It is high energy and very physical and has such pace. Bertie stands square on to the audience and that is liberating. It is great to play such a massive performance.

“In Perfect Nonsense, Bertie has decided to put on a show. Jeeves has built the set and made the show. And now the audience has come to see Bertie’s show.

“The concept of Jeeves and Wooster endures because it is such a fun set-up. There is the bumbling upper class idiot, who is constantly delighted or terrified and that is very enjoyable to watch. And through it all, Jeeves is the omnipresent valet, who obviously we don’t have.

“I was a big fan of Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster in the 1990s TV series. But the way this stage show is put together feels very different.”

Robert Webb as Bertie Wooster appears in the Olivier award-winning comedy Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, from Tuesday, March 17, to Saturday, March 21. Jason Thorpe will play Jeeves and manservant Seppings is Christopher Ryan. Box Office: 01227 787787.