Review by Steve Bennett

Psst! Wanna know a secret? Wendy Wason’s 2010 show is packed with opinions on a huge range of topics, imparted with warmth and charm from this always-engaging gossip. But it’s in serious need of both a stronger sense of purpose, and a few more gags.

This inviting Edinburgh-born comic admits she’s something of a scatterbrain, which makes her delivery naturally conversational. But when you’ve a topic as broad as this, focus makes all the difference.

As you might expect from her previous shows, she indiscreetly discloses the secrets of family and friends – and, fair play, some of her own as well – to build a conspiratorial rapport. Her ambitions, though, are greater than this and she touches on weightier topics such as the Hutton Inquiry cover-up, celebrities who carefully manage their image with the aid of duplicitous publicists, why we tolerate MPs who get up to sexual shenanigans but not financial ones, and the erosion of privacy through social networking sites such as Facebook.

She has smart views on most of this, but each does not relate to the next, so there’s no strong through line to link these diverse and densely-concentrated selection of topics. Plus she is prone to doing far too much factual set-up for mediocre jokes. She admits this show has taken form over its festival run, but it’s still not there, in need of a strong directorial touch to stop that brain ‘bouncing around’, as she puts it, and draw out the gags.

Wason is good company, though, and not always in a soft, affable way – some of the stronger segments come when she gets agitated, breaking her polite exterior to seethe: ‘And another thing I can’t stand…’

She might not yet have truly unlocked the secret of success in stand-up, but each year, this knowing and charismatic comic takes another step closer towards it.

Review date: 30 Aug 2010
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett