CANTERBURY Players could not have chosen a more topical subject for their latest play. My Friend Miss Flint by Donald Churchill and Peter Yeldham is about tax evasion.

Naturally, it involves deceiving the Inland Revenue. The person responsible is Sarah the accountant ex-wife of Tom Lambert (Colin Baker), a woolly-minded TV gardening personality.

Played charismatically by Caroline Mears, Sarah confesses to Tom that when conducting his tax affairs, she invented a Public Relations consultant, a Miss Joanna Flint, in order to deduct expenses and went on to use her for all her clients.

Two tax investigators are on the case. The first is Gilbert Dodds who, in the hands of Rex Mears, appears to be a typical upright civil servant. Heather Holstein makes the second, Chief Inspector Cynthia Lens, a far more canny character who is determined to track down Miss Flint.

But it is Dodds who questions an increasingly uneasy Tom who wriggles from one disturbing question to the next. It gets to the point where it becomes necessary to create a Miss Flint, a role which falls to Tom’s Prudence, Sarah’s schoolfriend, who we don’t see.

Tom’s inebriated char, Albert (Colin Ludden ) believing Miss Lens to be Prudence, tells her about his own tax evasion schemes as well as giving the game away for Colin and Sarah. Miss Lens listens with growing interest to his confessions.

This is British comedy at its best and Canterbury Players make the most of each faux pas. Colin Baker, who stepped in with only three weeks’ notice, is superb as the increasingly uncomfortable Tom and Jennifer Coupe does well as the devious Lucy who is not the sweet girl she at first appears to be. Rex Mears and Heather Holstein are hilarious as the two tax inspectors.

The play has a happy, if unexpected ending.

* My Friend Miss Flint is at the Methodist Church, Brook Road, Davyhulme, until Saturday, April 25. Tickets, priced £7, are available from 0161 748 8403 or on the door. Star rating: * * * *