Jenny Eclair shows no sign of slowing down. She bounds onstage in her yellow crocs and continues to stroll, skip, sneak and sashay around, a bundle of energy. She offers biscuits to the front row, the foil-wrapped package leading her to segue into her thoughts about Madonna and the pain of having to wake up each day still having to be Madonna. Somewhere along the line, she’s glad she’s not the sort of older woman who’s desperately trying to keep in shape. ‘Bison in jeggings,’ she says mischievously.
This show, Jokes, Jokes, Jokes Live!, her first since the glorious Sixty! (FFS!) in 2021, is packed with new material. It’s loosely autobiographical in structure, taking us through a hilarious tour of her life. She has old photos, so we see her parents’ wedding photo and a snap of Eclair and her sister as two beautiful blonde little girls. ‘She doesn’t moisturise now,’ she confides. ‘Skin like bark’.
Home is Lytham St Anne’s, south of Blackpool, where, she claims nothing much went on. Those of us of Eclair’s vintage nod in delight at her reference to Thursday night’s Top of the Pops being the TV high spot of the week. There used to be Man from Uncle before that, but perhaps Eclair was just a bit too young.
Teenage transforms Eclair, in ways we might imagine. She has a fabulous riff about discovering sexual release riding a bannister. National Trust properties with their impressive staircases, she starts to think, letting us imagine the possibilities. She’s always hilarious on the subject of her own body. Having given birth to her daughter, she reckons her lady parts start sagging ‘like a woolly in the wash’. ‘Labia like spaniel ears,’ she adds.
Eclair is never afraid of ageing – indeed it’s an endlessly rich seam for her comedy. Decades are measured in her changing beachwear, leading to her embrace of the one piece, ‘like a loose cover for a three-piece suite’. The world divides into women who still wear glamorous undies and the rest of us ‘with underwear like lost property.’ She’s glad to see Kate Bush in later age has larded up. ‘Don’t go running up that hill!’ she warns. As for ABBA – it’s not fair, they’re just holograms. She offers to show us her homemade hologram, a glove puppet with inked-on eyes. Meanwhile, she’s glad to be free of the tyranny of dinner parties and their smug discussions of ‘hideous gifted children’. She ends with a touching little set about her new grandson.
The jokes really do keep coming in Jokes, Jokes, Jokes Live!
Reviewed on 28 March 2025 and continues to tour
