Al's kicking off.

Byline: By Gavin Allen South Wales Echo 

The World Cup kicks off tomorrow and all over the country people will be packed into pubs watching the big screen and dispensing drunken wisdom to the world.

But none of them will do it with anywhere near the inebriated clarity of backwards logic that Al Murray's Pub Landlord will produce at the Wales Millennium Centre on Saturday night.

Murray, arguably the best stand-up on the circuit, is back out on the road with his massively successful ...And Another Thing tour and its current run just happens to coincide with the World Cup, which means the Pub Landlord, the ultimate Welsh-baiting Little Englander, will provide a running commentary on the tournament.

'His take on it is that it doesn't matter who wins it because we invented football in the first place,' says Murray, the star of sitcom Time Gentlemen Please, spoof pub quiz Fact Hunt and An Audience With Al Murray: Pub Landlord, which attracted more than six million viewers last year.

'If it wasn't for us, all the other countries would have nothing to do in June so how the English team performs is fortuitously irrelevant.

'It gets us off the hook!'

At 2pm on the afternoon of his Cardiff date England open their campaign against Paraguay so there should be plenty to ramble on about, add to that a game involving the Argies later that evening and the fact that the whole thing is being hosted in Germany and he has plenty of inspiration for off-the-cuff material.

The trademark xenophobia that it is certain to produce is a crucial part of Murray's brilliantly accurate and loving caricature of the traditional pub bore which is imbued with analysis of what makes us British.

'In ...And Another Thing, I'm stalked across stage by a giant, eight-foot- wide Euro coin,' he laughs.

'It becomes like panto, with the audience shouting out 'it's behind you'.They end up booing the Euro - and who's to say they're wrong?

'Everyone knows someone like the Pub Landlord, someone who doesn't like change and fears anything foreign.

'Every culture has its equivalent of the Little Englander.

'But opinions are only opinions, and everyone is entitled to them.

'I disagree with people who think Europe is fundamentally corrupt, but I would never say they are wrong to believe that.'

The show has offended some people who disagree with the nationalism and xenophobia on offer, no matter how comic it is, but Murray dismisses the complaints.

'There is a growing culture of victimhood in this country,' he sighed.

'People say, 'I'm offended - therefore, that grants me rights over you' but what they forget is that this is only comedy.

'Who cares? After all, I'm not standing for election!'