Sarah Callaghan: Elephant

Would you take on Sarah Callaghan in an arm wrestle? No problem. Would you turn your back on her in a street fight? Damn right you wouldn't. Nor should you sit in the front row unless you are well prepared for her to pull a verbal razor blade from her trainer and cut you a new laugh hole.

The way Callaghan bounces in and out of the crowd is wondrous and it seems to genuinely delight her to do it. She manages to be warmly affectionate and viciously aggressive at the same time. She is angry at the world for the way it treats her but prepared to change if the world will change too. Just don’t step on her trainers.

The word "geezer" almost fits but doesn’t do her any justice. Part of her charm is how Callaghan impersonates the more well-to-do and the lower end of the social spectrum with equal skill and disdain – she is not a class snob, she hates everyone.

Healthy smatterings of cheap gags are spaced throughout but serve to disarm the audience for the well delivered big laughs. Hard to predict, she ducks and dives her way through each bit artfully and with a delicate style that is on the edge of character comedy but manages to feel authentic nonetheless. This is the real Sarah Callaghan: she is dangerously funny; if she can just keep the danger and increase the funny, she will be deadly.