Diane Spencer: Hurricane Diane

Diane Spencer is an endearing cross between Mary Poppins and a drunk cousin at a wedding as she perches on a rooftop set and recounts her search for love and her desire to get away from her dysfunctional rural family.

She looks like a 1950s Heartbeat sweetheart and one of her self-confessed fantasies is to be ravished by the local bobby, the running joke being that Spencer is actually a sexually adventurous and delightfully smutty city girl. She herself says that she is aiming for the ‘slutty Disney princess’ look.

There is a direct correlation between how funny the show is and how filthy it gets – not because filth is always funny but because it fleshes out Spencer’s stage persona with all its insecurities, sexual tics and teenage grievances.

She weaves the set together well using her own family to join the dots. Her mum in particular is used as both mirror and comic relief, all helped by the fact that 80 per cent of what Spencer tells the audience is believable, if not necessarily true. This is testament to the strength of her persona and leaves you feeling that you have been given more than a collection of entertaining but inflated situational anecdotes.

There are plenty of women talking about being women at the Fringe. Spencer is definitely one of the funnier ones, and her tales of relationship woe and unexpected fulfilment are both comforting and heartwarming, as well as being amusing.