A riotous girls’ night out
Glancing around the venue at a Jenny Eclair gig, you’re struck by one highly unusual thing – 90 per cent of the audience are women. To say that Eclair and Sarah Millican between them have got the menopause-based comedy market sewn up is an understatement. They’re the last two female stand-ups of a certain age still standing now that Jo Brand has seemingly given up the live game.
But despite playing to an onside crowd, Eclair’s writing skills are such that her gags seldom settle for the obvious laugh. Her content may focus shamelessly on her withering lady parts, but it’s not an especially bruising evening for the smattering of men in the audience.
Rather, it’s a celebratory affair, marvelling at how she’s made it to 60 without owning a gravy boat or a matching set of napkins.
The ‘face of Vagisan’, as she likes to be known, has hit her seventh decade in style. She’s now too old to die young, so hang ’em all: ‘The kids have left home and your old man can still wipe his own a***... what’s not to like?’
Eclair has always been graphic and forthright, but Camberwell’s finest has toned down the sex content since her 1990s heyday – these days, she says, ‘sex is a bit like making your own pastry – you know you should, but you just can’t be bothered’.
There are some endearing senior moments as she asks the audience for the name of something she can’t remember and then tells a joke she forgot to include in the first half.
Eclair is not yet at the stage where she hands out free incontinence pads to her punters, but if she makes it to 70 and is still gigging, you wouldn’t put it past her.
All in all, this is a riotous girls’ night out from start to finish.