Fiona O'Loughlin

Not long after making her entrance, Fiona O'Loughlin professes to being too lazy to write jokes, preferring instead to tell stories about her non-showbusiness life as an alcoholic, forgetful mother and a nurse entirely lacking in bedside manner. While this is not entirely true—there are more than a few canny punchlines—O'Loughlin's comedy assuredly does fall into that confessional, anecdotal camp whose humour is slow-burning, but often no less effective than the variety espoused by, say, another notable Antipodean comic flouting his wares at this year's Fringe.

Her thematic bedrock is an ironic anti-feminism that admirers of Jo Brand will be comfortably familiar with. The two share a background in the medical profession and a dry distaste for overstatement, and no doubt as O'Loughlin's celebrity grows, comparisons will be increasingly drawn between the two.

The focus of her often viperish routine rests in two main areas – O'Loughlin's own troublesome physiology and her expansive and long-lived brood of Irish-Catholic relatives. Reportedly, her eldest son has threatened legal action if his name is not dropped from the set. Retorts O'Loughlin: “He's 21, he has no money, so I really don't have to worry yet.” This sour subversion of the maternal archetype is the linchpin of O'Loughlin's set. It's a neat trick which has the legs to support most of her act, and although rarely outrageously funny or chin-strokingly high brow, an evening in O'Loughlin's company is one undoubtedly well spent.