Clare Harrison: Budget J Lo

Clare Harrison clearly enjoys the idea of exploring her comedy through a wide range of characters. The show opens with a warm-up act from her main alter-ego, spacey life coach Andrea Love, and goes on to feature brief pre-recorded visits from her other YouTube-based personas. It's a good choice. The bewigged, gold-catsuited character we experience live has, by far, the most comedic potential. 

Unfortunately, the show proper gets off to a rickety start with a game of identifying pop songs via comically misheard lyrics, which largely puts the brakes on Harrison's characterisation. The lyrics feel like they should be a succession of punchlines, but instead only set up a series of awkward silences when the audience invariably fails to guess the song from Harrison's mangled quotations.

Once Harrison herself appears, accent proudly reverted to Essex, the pacing and quality improve. However, Harrison seems determined to throw every possible joke she can think of at the audience and hope that some of them find their mark. The result is a lively but patchy hour. There are at least three jokes that end with the phrase, "Oo-er". There are puns ranging from the groanworthy to the cringeworthy (although, to be fair, most puns fall somewhere within that spectrum anyway).

Her digressions on her weight battles probably contain the set's most successful material – quick-witted, self-deprecating and relatable. Buried within Budget J Lo there are all-too-brief flashes of talented comic storytelling. It would be encouraging to see more of it.