Rhona Cameron

Rhona Cameron returns after a four-year break from stand-up to Edinburgh for this year’s Fringe, combining material drawn from a mixture of light-hearted personal anecdotes with observational comedy from an intellectual stance. Like many comedians, much of her material is self referential, and she pokes fun at her age (forty-one, as we are reminded throughout) and sexuality (light-hearted lesbian jokes feature heavily); and though her stance is exaggerated it is not overly self-effacing and maintains a polite candour for a genteel audience.

A sharp delivery and ability to improvise underscore the comic's quick wit. She strides comfortably on stage, launching a tirade of quickfire punchlines peppered with polysyllabic words and intelligent phrases. As a performer she is animated, lively and attuned to her audience: all hallmarks of her talent and experience. She is also refreshingly down-to-earth for a comedian who achieved mainstream fame after starring in the first series of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Outta Here! in 2002.

However, a lot of her observational material focuses on the concerns of a decidedly middle-aged demographic, berating the technological complexities of modern life – the Internet, mobile phones and new-fangled 21st Century fads like organic, fair-trade or supermarket shopping. Though this is not ground-breaking stuff, it’s elegantly done. In reference to flip-flops, for example, we are presented with seemingly seamless juxtapositions with words like "Antipodean" that seem to roll off the tongue; Cameron impressively manages to attribute the sublime to the mundane.