And so another Fringe faces its final curtain. Small acts have stretched themselves to snapping point. Larger acts have battled for the most open Perrier Award in recent memory and the biggest names have cleaned up at the box office. Jo Brand might be cashing in, but she is keeping busy, moonlighting dramatically in Mental in the early evening and then delivering this short, sharp and occasionally shocking post-watershed stand-up set.
Motherhood and cheesy television work have not changed Brand, they've simply given her more material. In front of a live audience, it is as if she has never been away. Which is both a compliment and a criticism. If you liked Brand before you'll like her now, but there is nothing groundbreaking here. Definitely not a case of re-Branding.
What you get are gags about sex, size and feminism. Sometimes together. An early reflection on bra-burning reveals that Brand's brassiere conflagration "heated a small village in Cumberland". Everything is delivered in that melancholy monotone. Brand sounds like Julian Clary on Mogadon as she describes Trinny, from What Not To Wear, as "Eva Braun on acid".
The best new routine centres on recent parenting experiences. There are hearty female roars of agreement when she explains how taxing two small children can be. The reason women don't have bollocks is because "they work them off ".
Her suburbanite fans - and there are, surprisingly, lots of them - certainly enjoy her hard-boiled cynicism. They want rude jokes from a hinterland somewhere between Victoria Wood and Roy "Chubby" Brown and they get truckloads. It is not the most subversive hour on the Fringe, but it is the only show that suggests that the Queen's nipples are a state secret.
In a year when women were once again embarrassingly absent from the Perrier shortlist, Brand is a reminder that women can top comedy's greasy pole. And in a Festival that has been dominated by computer technology - Apple has probably made more money than most acts - she
harks back to a romantic, no-frills era. No wonder she has such a devoted mature fanbase. Why reinvent yourself when you've got Brand loyalty that younger comedians would die for?
