Tiffany Stevenson: Uncomfortably Numb

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Tiffany Stevenson feels compelled to convince us in her thickest Cockney brogue that, despite living in yummy mummy-ville Muswell Hill and getting into the kind of arguments with her boyfriend that result in angry usage of the electronic coffee bean grinder, it doesn’t make her any less of a proud working-class lass. She presents a similar dichotomy as a stand-up.

The 34 year-old’s overarching theme throughout Uncomfortably Numb—that women needn’t be bullied by celebrity-culture into constantly trying to turn back the years, and instead should feel comfortable looking and acting their age—is neatly worked in, and suggestive of a smart and thoughtful comedian determined to make a resonant point in an un-preachy fashion.

And yet the most crowd-pleasing stuff in Stevenson’s set is the most lazily unsophisticated, the kind of material pink feather boa wearing Grassmarket hen parties would lap up with lusty abandon. These are jokes about how she’d have a “flap hanging out the side” if she tried to squeeze into a pair of Topshop hot pants at her age, and getting “fingered by an international” on holiday in Ayia Napa as a 19 year-old. The very mention of the word “vajazzle” gets perhaps the biggest hoot of the hour. 

Stevenson’s flow comes very naturally, and the urbanely witty and take-no-shit wicked sides of her personality do harmonise. But in so far as presenting herself as a salt-of-the-earth straight-talker without falling into the trap of just sounding like another foul-mouthed comic banking cheap laughs by calling a spade a spade, on this evidence Stevenson remains a work in progress.