Posturing cheerfully in a pulled-up hoodie, she spits out her greetings like a pumped up performance poet before launching into a string of typical Yashere anecdotes: rap stars think they are so street but then they have chandeliers in their ‘cribs’, colonic irrigation is brilliant but – ew – so disgusting, black women don't like getting their hair wet. The audience relaxes in familiar territory.

Yashere is a shrewd entertainer and knows exactly what buttons to press to keep her audiences happy. With a little bit of politics, a little bit of the personal and a good smattering of knob gags, her pick 'n' mix material has something for everyone.

It's not hard to see why she has retained her position as ‘that woman off the telly’ or why she keeps getting flown to war zones to perform gigs for Our Boys. She is a formidable presence on stage, with a self-aware swagger that nips heckles in the bud. It certainly takes a confident performer to break from routine to confiscate an audience member's bleeping mobile phone and shove it down her pants.

All very slick but not exactly innovative. There is no doubt Yashere is capable of better - she hints at it now and then with a genuinely incisive observation or a flash of ad-libbed genius - but too often she falls back on the safe pay-offs, the middle-of-the-road material disguised as something more daring, those bloody impressions of her mum.

When the formula is so well received, it's not hard to see why she would be loathe to meddle with it, but it's a depressingly calculated approach to comedy.

Reviewed by: Nione Meakin
Brighton, May 2009

Published: 20 May 2009