There are seven signs of ageing, according to a well-known moisturiser brand – but Sarah Millican gives them very short shrift. Here instead are Millican’s own seven signs, none to do with skincare and most mainlining her trademark brand of vulgarity and intimate body comedy. Amid the merriment as the 47-year-old tells us about her experience of haemorrhoids, loose stools and farting through folds of flesh, there’s no point protesting that another sign of ageing, arguably, is the evolution of one’s taste and sensibility. Millican seems immune to that: this show offers precisely the combination of domestic, corporeal and sex comedy she’s always delivered on stage. The body may be ageing, but her comic craft exists in perfect stasis.
Perfect, for some, may be the operative word: there’s no denying Millican can turn a joke, and does so as skilfully here as ever. Particularly in the second half, where that signs-of-ageing routine tees up her most concentrated sequence of carnal humour. Here we find her critiquing the terms used to sell sanitary towels, with reference to the experience of using them – and painting rococo word pictures (Saving Private Ryan is evoked) of the carnage unleashed on the toilet bowl by her particularly heavy flow. Here too a smear test routine, as our host finds herself perplexed when the question is posed: “what size speculum are you?”
