FULL marks for (A) getting the original team back together and (B) for doing more than simply cobble together a few old episodes from the original TV series.

After 15 years away, the Birds fly back in a new play that hangs the old gags, insults and rivalries on a plot about murder in an old people’s home that virtually vanishes after the interval as the trio sit around drinking and talking about sex.

If you liked the original TV series – and I can’t say it was on my must-see list – then this won’t disappoint. The people on their feet at the end applauding are evidence that these Birds are no fly-bynights.

Tracy and Sharon receive a mysterious message from former next door neighbour, man-eating Dorien, now amazingly running a residential care home for the well-off. One “guest” dies shortly after changing his will in her favour, leaving Dorien suspected of murder.

The niceties of plot shouldn’t occupy us for long. What everyone has come to see is Pauline Quirke, Linda Robson and Lesley Joseph in the flesh playing characters they know and love. There are jokes about Cameronland, benefits dodgers and do-it-yourself bejazzling (a tube of glue and some hundreds and thousands if you want to try it at home) but more jokes about Dorien’s ferocious sexual appetite than you could shake a dildo at.

When a police officer accuses Dorien of murder with the query, “How many men have you finished off?” everyone knows exactly what the joke is. And you can imagine the exchange that follows a character announcing his name is Roger.

The trio of leading ladies are magnificent and obviously having a ball, even working in a joke about Robson’s jungle appearance in I’m A Celebrity.

Joseph, whose Dorien remains the same apart from some tightening “south of the border” and even shorter skirts, suffers the humiliation and abuse hurled at Dorien, responding with leg-crossing that makes Sharon Stone’s Basic Instinct scene look positively sedate.

􀁧 Until Saturday. Box office 08448-112121 and at theatreroyal.co.uk. Then York Grand Opera House, June 25 to 29. Box office 0844-8713024 and at gtickets.com/york