To say that Jordan Gray made an eye-catching entrance into comedy would be quite the understatement. Her debut Is It a Bird? wowed the Edinburgh fringe, and made her the first transgender performer to headline the London Palladium. Then she stripped naked on Channel 4’s Friday Night Live, and unleashed a transphobic storm. That’s the context (she’s a huge success; she’s received death threats) for an hour she admits may be subject to “difficult second show syndrome”. Acknowledging that is very on-brand: Gray is self-aware bordering on self-completely-fascinated.
And she’s got plenty to be fascinated by: Is That a C*ck in Your Pocket … showcases a performer with lashings of panache and no filter. In song and standup, the show opens on the attack, with joke after joke about her status as a woman with talent, a ravening ego – and with a penis too. One song, from an act oft-likened in flamboyance to her Essex compatriot Russell Brand, tells us she wants to “fuck myself with my own dismembered shlong”. Several gags recycle old-school sexism into edgy gender-bending humour. Another routine itemises the four categories of death threat she’s received.
