Aisling Bea review – glamourpuss meets accidental mum in a scatty show that revels in immaturity

The sitcom star and Taskmaster stalwart is on commanding form as she embarks on Older Than Jesus, her first – and deeply daft – standup tour

That staple realisation of early midlife, that one has now lived longer than Jesus did, usually hits around aged 33. Aisling Bea is 42, and only just getting round to performing Older Than Jesus – a show, or at least a title, you suspect may have been long in the planning. Fair enough: what with hit sitcoms here and a Taskmaster stint there, the County Kildare import has only now embarked on her first standup tour. But there’s nothing rookie about the 75 minutes offered up here: Bea is on commanding and fun-loving form with a set assembling the thoughts prompted by (and sometimes even related to) her recent “accidental pregnancy” and becoming a mum.

Lest that suggest maturity on the show’s part, let me cheerfully note that Bea comes across as unreconstructedly daft and self-involved as ever. Whether she’s recalling a childhood fashioning DIY Dairylea spreadables with secondhand “bodies of Christ”, acting out at the wrap party for a duff Take That movie, or moonlighting as a dad at her sister’s antenatal class, the keynote is always cartoon egotism and a keen sense of her own ridiculousness. Putting her back out when performing a “slut drop”, or later curating the playlist to her own C-section, we’re invited to savour the contrast between the glamourpuss Bea of her own fervent imagination, and the less Insta-friendly reality.

The butt of the joke is usually burbling, preening, high-strung Aisling herself – with the target occasionally widening to include, for example, the brand of sex education administered in her Catholic girls’ school. Then in the closing stages, a moral to the story is ventured, as pregnancy and parenthood reveal to our host a range of gender expectations she strongly rejects. If that closing sermon comes somewhat out of the blue (or should that be pink?), it feels winningly from-the-heart, and gives some closure to this lively, scatty tour d’horizon of Bea’s middle years – weighing up the life she’s got and the life she gave up, and finding much to love and laugh about in both of them.

• At De Montfort Hall, Leicester, 8 April. Then touring