The audience in the Latitude comedy tent can be a bit of a mixed bunch. Families having a picnic, friends sheltering from the sun or the rain or just slackers and stoners flaked out after a hard night. Not necessarily comedy fans. But it was clear by the cheer when Sara Pascoe came on that a lot of people knew her and wanted to hear what she had to say, which always makes a performer happier than confusion or indifference (which seemed to be what Nick Helm was experiencing when I arrived as he was finishing). 

Pascoe’s set was mainly a truncated version of the truncated version of her touring show that I saw at Soho Theatre earlier this year. Plus, inevitably a few post-Brexit thoughts. Pascoe gleefully informed the audience that her mother thought that as the UK was leaving Europe she would have to buy a new globe. We know that Pascoe is a very good storyteller, but some pithy one-liners on the subject confirmed that Pascoe is improving all the time as a topical joke writer.

The meat of her set was about how she was trying to be a good person - in part to make up for being a bad person as a teenager and giving out sexual favours in exchange for drugs. This is a fairly loose peg which allows her to hang together some very different stories, from her theory that socialism died when the TV got better to wondering if she has mouse ancestry.

Like the rest of us Pascoe is confuse politically. Is Uber, for instance a good model for the sharing post-capitalist economy or a bad one? It’s cheap, almost anyone can do it, but the faces of the drivers coming for you as their car moves around the little map on your smartphone screen are often terrifying. 

Pascoe’s style is subtle and skilful. She doesn’t seem hard-hitting because she is so friendly and unassuming onstage. But there are some strong ideas behind the whimsical delivery and clownish posturing. The set was nearly derailed by a wasp’s next being found in the tent. But the real sting was onstage.

More Latitude Reviews here.