Review by Steve Bennett

As the audience files into Edinburgh's hottest room for Lucy Porter's one-woman debut, a slide show of childhood pictures plays, depicting the comic when she was small and cute.

But years have passed, and today she is... well, small and cute. Cute not just in the way she looks, but her whole comedy attitude.

"I'm such a bitch," she says - unconvincingly - at one point. No one would believe that, for this is a happy, feelgood show from an easy-going, good-natured performer.

It is a little light on substance, but what it lacks in structure it more than makes up for in funny one-liners and lovely observational imagery.

The show's alleged theme is time - which basically means the half-Sicilian, half-Irish Porter can talk about her past, present and future. Not exactly constraining, but a good excuse to wheel out some quality stand-up - and some less successful characters.

Porter slips into two other personas - neither of which will win any awards for originality. There's the Hello!-friendly It girl Lady Victoria "Binkie" Creet-Wilkinson and the Californian New Age guru Scorpio Rising - both fairly obvious caricatures.

The former doesn't really come off at all, and the latter has some good lines - but essentially as an extension of Porter's stand-up rather than from the essence of the character.

It's clear Porter is much better as herself than as other people, as she is simply impossible to dislike.

This may be quite an unambitious little show, but for the most part it provides a fine example of warm-hearted stand-up that ultimately proves irresistibly delightful.

Review date: 1 Jan 2002
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett