Sophie Duker: Hot Beef Injection review – bad encounters with men spun into great comedy

The standup is on sparkling form as she mines a lifetime of baffling and alarming experiences for a smart, purposeful and very funny hour

Sophie Duker is done with men. She swears it. And, in her fourth hour, Hot Beef Injection – named after a crude euphemism from 80s teen film The Breakfast Club – she is going to tell us exactly why.

Duker has had her fair share of relationships, tracking all the way back to her adolescence. “I did hand stuff with a 16-year-old boy,” she announces at the show’s opening. On reflection, though, most of those experiences have left her feeling, well, weird.

Hot Beef Injection presents a gallery of men who have intimidated, disappointed or baffled her, from the swaggering alpha male types of Soho to the repairman who deliberately leaves his tools behind in the hope of seeing her again. Later come more sinister stories: getting into a car with a strange man in a time of need and finding herself locked in a room with a man in a position of power at a comedy club. Taken together, they paint a bleak picture – one that will be familiar to many women and that, as Duker quips, Louis Theroux has only recently begun to notice. Throughout it all, Duker has learned to keep smiling.

This leads us to the viral question at the show’s centre: would you rather be alone in a forest with a random man or a bear? You don’t need me to tell you which side Duker falls on – I mean, have you seen Paddington? She offsets all the darkness with her trademark breezy wit. And the audience is entirely under her spell. She joyfully targets the “milky whites”, interrogates the single straight white man who has come to her show of his own accord, and does roaring impressions of men in their cars drinking energy drinks.

The final payoff feels a little too neat for a show that has, until that moment, been pretty dismissive of all things male. No matter – Duker’s presence is all good-time joy and delight, and this is a show so neatly crafted and intelligent that every routine serves a purpose.

• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 30 August
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