Eleanor Conway: You May Recognise Me From Tinder

Eleanor Conway suggesting we deposit £20 into her collection bucket at the end of this show is the Fringe equivalent of a restaurant presenting unsuspecting diners with a basket of stale bread and charging for it after the meal, irrespective of whether its contents have been gladly touched.

Given that the performer is herself a recovering alcoholic, sober for five years she tells us, there's something terribly cynical about her reliance on playing to a heavily lubricated crowd. In the cold light of day her material—a disorderly grab bag of sexual anecdotes told without charm or insight—is unforgivably lazy, and so its success rests on her audience willingly dulling their critical faculties. Even then, it's not before long before the braying, inebriated masses start to lose interest, dozing off, getting caught up in disruptive conversations of their own, or blundering their way back toward the bar for a refill. We're all losers in this race to the bottom.

With the exception of a factually innaccurate aside about Fred West, more or less every word uttered tonight carries a stamp of tawdry, juvenile sex humour. The tragedy of You May Recognise Me From Tinder is that Conway's experiences of excess and occasional sex work could make for an interesting and even necessary show if handled with deftness and maturity.