Jenny Eclair, Chorley Little Theatre, 5 November 2012

Jenny Eclair's Eclarious tour brought her back to Chorley Little Theatre for the second time in under two years.  She could sell out bigger venues but would appear to like the intimacy that Chorley's home of comedy provides.

After a nervous start, in which her delivery was noticably rushed, she settled into her stride.  She gave us a taste of her novel, which was nothing more than middle age porn with its references to sumptuous furniture, before prowling the stage and launching into an exploration of the issues facing women of a certain age.

Eclair is from Lytham St Annes, and whilst her familiarity with the North West is welcome, as the audience was immediately able to picture her portrayal of her no nonsense mother, the story about what she got up to in the bus shelter in Lytham is less so. How she got such big biceps is a gag that was told on her last visit and was one of several jokes that she told last time she played Chorley and which should have been rested.

She was funnier with her newer material, with much of her act focused on the perils of being over 50, whether that is lack of bladder control or having to hold onto one's breasts when running to stop them flopping about.  She is unimpressed with Madonna's propensity to flash her nipples when other women of a similar age are more inclined to slump on the sofa drooling biscuit crumbs from their mouth.

Jenny doesn't really do sex, and doesn't know why her partner Geoff is still with her given her overall decrepitude.  Her preoccupation is with how her body, and those of all women of her age, is changing, whether it's her hair falling out or the shape of her knees.  These are revealed to a disbelieving audience to be rather, er, manly.

Eclair does not have any pretensions. At home she prefers to spend the day in her night dress if she can, and doesn't like unannounced casual visitors because it means she has to put her clothes on when she could simply stay in her knickers. Small children are particularly unwelcome because of their tendency to make a mess.

Eclair attracts a predominantly female audience - 90% of the Chorley Little Theatre crowd were women - and they loved her take on post menopausal life.  But the men too were laughing out loud.

Another sell out gig at Chorley Little Theatre and a happy comedy audience.

Jenny Eclair, Chorley Little Theatre, 19 March 2011

Jenny Eclair sold out two nights at the Chorley Little Theatre on the strength of her appearance on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here in 2010, but the hit ITV show received nary a mention. Any youngsters in the audience looking for anecdotes about sitting round the camp fire with Ant and Dec had their hopes quickly dashed: “I’ve got a message for any children in the audience tonight – f*** off!”

Instead the Grumpy Old Woman and one time Perrier Award winning comedienne gave her mainly female audience an X-rated analysis of what its like to be middle aged and entering the menopause. And so began a show which, although entitled Old Dog, New Tricks, could just as easily have been called Bodily Functions. In a set that was definitely not for the squeamish, no physical act or scatological description was left unexplored as Eclair brought gasps of shock and gales of laughter from her mainly female audience.

Identifying the men in the audience as designated drivers brought along so that the women could get drunk, Eclair talked about passing wind on the bus, passing wind whilst having a massage and whether middle aged women should gang together clutching their private parts to intimidate hoodies in the part of south east London where she now lives.

Eclair hails from Lytham St Annes and shared with her audience fond but entirely unrepeatable memories of spending her formative years dispensing sexual favours to teenage boys. Her parents still live in Lytham and were the subject of some of her material but Geoff, her partner of 28 years, was the butt of more jokes. We learnt that watching the Tour de France on TV he fell off the sofa pretending to pedal along with the riders, whilst plans for a Vegas wedding were abandoned because he couldn’t differentiate between a serving spoon and a dessert spoon. Breakfast in bed served by Geoff is also over rated (“wrong type of marmalade”), as is oral sex.

The female obsession with removing body hair, the wardrobe habits of female weather presenters (“I don’t want my weather girl in a spangly top looking like she’s been clubbing all night”) and the delights of the Per Una range of clothing from M&S all received the Éclair treatment. This grumpy old woman likes the self service section at her local Sainsbury because it makes shoplifting easier, but feels her frequent shopper status should entitle her to a VIP Nectar card and a free glass of champagne. And she rather likes Booths – “it’s the sort of place that, if you fainted while you were there, they’d make sure your skirt was pulled down so that you looked decent.”

Eclair is a Northern lass with middle class pretensions that have softened as she gets older: “I used to arrive in a place hoping to score some Class A drugs. Now I hope they’ve got a nice floral clock.” Few of her jokes could be repeated in a family newspaper and Jenny Eclair is unlikely to be offered the freedom of Lytham St Annes any time soon, but if she toned down her act in order to do so, the fans who packed the Chorley Little Theatre would not forgive her.