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I've not consciously seen Porter's work before - she hasn't registered on the panel games, and I haven't picked out her sketch writing or other appearances. But still, a rising name, so I thought I'd see her at the Carbunkle.
She's big enough to have support - Mike Fabri who seems to be in the Eddie Izzard mode of gosh, I can't remember what I'm meant to be saying, let's go a little bit surreal. He started talking with the audience very early, and managed to get local prejudices aired by letting us boo Folkestone and Dover, and finding a couple who were civil servants (one in Customs and Excise, the other Immigration) and then an events officer who almost heckled him but I suspect had forgotten it was performance rather than conversation. These are the moments I love in live stuff. He cut pretty close to the bone - a joke about someone waking out of a coma and mistaking Camilla for Diana, the Queen masturbating, the Virgin Mary's hymen and sneezing on your partner's vagina. Pretty good for a half hour set for a small audience not expecting to see him.
Porter's show was meant to be cynical about love, and dealt in part with the times she's sabotaged her attempts to have a succesful date. Part of the appeal is obviously someone disarmingly petite and demur, bare foot, saying something devastatingly rude, but there's much more to her act than bodily functions. One prop was the book How to get a husband when you're 35 with the subtitled With what I learned at Harvard Business School. This included such unlikely advice as getting out of conversational ruts with statements such as "I've just got a new cat. Do you want to see a picture?" which would likely send someone heading for the hills. She also talks about her OCD - making the point that being in love is like being mental.
It's hard to remember precise examples of her humour - it's such a gossamer thing and so tied to that event - but I did like her discovery that, on being told by her bank to change her identity question, it can be any question the customer likes and any answer, not just "What's your mother's maiden name?". So:
Bank: "What do you think you're doing, going out dressed like that?"
Porter: "You're not my real dad, you can't tell me what to do."
She comes very highly recommended; I note, however, a predictably largely female audience.
She's big enough to have support - Mike Fabri who seems to be in the Eddie Izzard mode of gosh, I can't remember what I'm meant to be saying, let's go a little bit surreal. He started talking with the audience very early, and managed to get local prejudices aired by letting us boo Folkestone and Dover, and finding a couple who were civil servants (one in Customs and Excise, the other Immigration) and then an events officer who almost heckled him but I suspect had forgotten it was performance rather than conversation. These are the moments I love in live stuff. He cut pretty close to the bone - a joke about someone waking out of a coma and mistaking Camilla for Diana, the Queen masturbating, the Virgin Mary's hymen and sneezing on your partner's vagina. Pretty good for a half hour set for a small audience not expecting to see him.
Porter's show was meant to be cynical about love, and dealt in part with the times she's sabotaged her attempts to have a succesful date. Part of the appeal is obviously someone disarmingly petite and demur, bare foot, saying something devastatingly rude, but there's much more to her act than bodily functions. One prop was the book How to get a husband when you're 35 with the subtitled With what I learned at Harvard Business School. This included such unlikely advice as getting out of conversational ruts with statements such as "I've just got a new cat. Do you want to see a picture?" which would likely send someone heading for the hills. She also talks about her OCD - making the point that being in love is like being mental.
It's hard to remember precise examples of her humour - it's such a gossamer thing and so tied to that event - but I did like her discovery that, on being told by her bank to change her identity question, it can be any question the customer likes and any answer, not just "What's your mother's maiden name?". So:
Bank: "What do you think you're doing, going out dressed like that?"
Porter: "You're not my real dad, you can't tell me what to do."
She comes very highly recommended; I note, however, a predictably largely female audience.
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