You might call London Hughes a force of nature – except you’d hesitate to credit that megawatt energy to anyone but herself. It’s part of the joke that she is a rampaging ego, with the personality to fill the Pleasance Attic several times over. So why oh why is she still single? That’s the question posed by the raucous To Catch a Dick, a whirlwind tour of the 30-year-old’s sexual and romantic history, and a howl of rage at the unequal distribution of comedy groupies along gender lines.
You can see why potential suitors might be frightened off, if her treatment of a middle-aged gent in the audience is characteristic: he is grilled about his sex life and obliged to mime oral sex on stage. There are few men in the crowd, and we’re all keeping our heads down. But even for us, Hughes’s show, in a manner reminiscent of Luisa Omielan’s before her, is a hugely engaging hour of party-comedy, packed with outrageous routines (“Why are you all prudey Judys in the audience today!?”) about blowjobs in Brighton, and the time she role-played 50 Shades of Grey.
It’s not usually the writing that catches the eye. Some of it is basic, or base: she describes her “ugly” teenage self as “the hunchback of Notre No-Dick”. There are stronger examples, such as the “I’m a farmer!” punchline to a routine about her husbandry of white penises. But it’s the cartoon-expressive face and G-force gusto of Hughes’s performance that cranks the laughs. It’s the sassy attitude toward former amours (“I was in LOVE with him! ... I don’t remember his name”), or the exultation she brings to her vision of a cunnilingus-friendly world: “That’s the Brexit I want!”
She recounts her experiences as a daytime presenter on Babestation, but among her other credits Hughes had a cameo in Fleabag, and, in the Waller-Bridge fashion, To Catch a Dick rejoices in flouting whatever proprieties are left around female sexuality. This is a woman who loves sex, loves glamour, loves herself and wants the world to know it. If this roof-raising performance is anything to go by, they soon will.
• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August.
