Gig review by Julian Hall at the London Palladium

For E! chat show queen, Chelsea Handler, life seems to be one long Spring Break. Her African travelogue, Uganda Be Kidding Me (whacky, huh?), recounts various mishaps as she and her cohorts go on safari, fuelled by, among other things, Handler's bad girl refusal to stop drinking while she takes antibiotics. If pop preener Kesha ever did stand up in later life I imagine it would be a lot like this.

Handler's London stand-up debut is more than just a canter through her latest book, however, and the only time she directly refers to it is to remind herself of the unflattering dating profile she set up for her make-up artist. Friend, foe or staff, no one comes out of Handler's mangler unscathed, herself included - self-deprecation being very much her redeeming feature.

Maybe a reading would have been preferable, given that the stand-up forays Handler makes lack any particular insight. Her parents were lazy assholes who used to give her raw eggs for lunch; she doesn't like her ass skin bleached, oh, and when you get food poising the world falls out of your ass.

Yes, this girl really is all about the ass, and when she is not talking about the ass she hits occasional bum notes such as asking the black people in the audience to smile so she can see them - an ancient, lamentable gag that makes no sense.

Handler's crowd don't miss a beat at that joke and, to be fair, that includes the small number of black people behind me. Maybe this is because the audience as a whole have been neutralised by her efficient and competent performance. She is very much in control, of that there is no doubt, so much so that you can't believe she would let her equal opportunities offending sound like it came from another time. But it happened.

Efficient, competent, but also glacial, this Claudia Schifferesque, Amazonian blonde is rapturously received by her fans throughout. It's certainly evident that she has both a sassy turn of phrase and putdowns with clout, and that her incredulity at trivial dramas - such as having her packing over-zealously labelled by her assistants - is reasonably infectious.

There is some humanity too in the protracted food poisoning section, a scenario where she is truly vulnerable, and the first where she smiles at her own material.

Overall, the experience is a transitory one, a feeling reinforced when 39-year-old Handler insinuates that she wouldn't be too thrilled if she was still doing stand-up at 50. Sadly, it was one of the few things said tonight that sounds like it comes straight from the heart.

Review date: 13 Jul 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett