If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Sarah Millican clings in this year's show to the formula – at least, it's starting to feel formulaic – that's served her so well since bagging the best newcomer gong in 2008. Sex, bodily functions, anxieties about weight, more sex – I'd tell Millican to change the record, but she'd probably fart while doing so, then tell a filthy joke about it. However frustrating her narrow range, the gags are still expertly put together, and Millican's demeanour – all salacious glee at these indiscreet confidences, and bemusement at her midlife indignities – is guaranteed to elicit laughs.
Observational comedy may be mocked by comics elsewhere on the fringe (and by Kevin Eldon in the same venue), but Millican has total faith in the laughter of recognition. Her boyfriend confuses Accessorize with Claire's Accessories. What larks. Men leave pee on the toilet seat? We've all been there, haven't we? Much of tonight's set is about weight issues: "I'd give my right arm to be a size 12," she says, then stops to think. "My right arm might be a size 12." It's all very jolly – but that's partly because Millican isn't sending up the self-indulgent/self-loathing paradigm of womanhood, she's celebrating it.
The upshot is a show that invites us all to laugh at things as they are and not imagine anything. At least, in Millican's case, observational material seems to spring from a fascination with the commonplace, and a genuine desire to share it. And – purely mechanically – she's a great joke-teller, topping off her tales of a divorcee and daughter's life with bulletproof laugh-lines (albeit fewer than in previous shows) and cartoonish expressions of dismay. Dependable, then – but unambitious.
