Mrs Barbara Nice

Even if you don’t already know Mrs Barbara Nice, you might well recognise her. A housewife and avid Take A Break reader from Stockport, her blend of maternal fussing, gentle innuendo and general confusion in the face of modern technology pitches her as the slightly inappropriate but well-meaning old aunt you never knew you had.

Fusing the down-to-earth humour of her former stomping ground Phoenix Nights with a nod to the glib teasing of Mrs Merton, Janice Connelly, Mrs Nice’s alter ego has created a polished comic persona. Every detail – Nice’s lexicon, wardrobe, and even favourite snack (individual apple pies) – although necessarily over-the-top, is entirely appropriate.

Still, a full hour of unbridled niceness would pall, so it’s just as well that Mrs Nice has a trick or two up her sleeve. Fed up with a world where people ignore each other in supermarkets and the price of pies is adversely affected by flooding, Mrs Nice devises various ways to raise her audience’s spirits. These include, but are not limited to: belly dancing, group karaoke and a getting-to-know-you session where audience members pass a ball of wool (Mrs Nice’s low-tech illustrative method of choice) around in order to ‘connect’. Participation in these activities is strictly non-negotiable, but Mrs Nice is so insistently nice about it that embarrassment quickly dissipates and everyone mucks in.

A bizarre finale, which features some actual stage-diving, rounds things off nicely, and, without any exaggeration, the entire audience leaves grinning. If you’re prepared to leave any notion of shame at the door, there isn’t a nicer time to be had in Edinburgh.