Kerry Godliman’s show title, Bosh, is taken from a Greg Davies phrase on Channel 4’s Taskmaster: “Here comes Godliman, boshing along.” The idea is that the south Londoner is a practical person, brisky working things out and getting them done. But life gets in the way – which is where the comedy comes in. The brusque efficiencies of her mothering are contrasted with parenting books and their aspirational ideals. Teenage romance 1980s-style is celebrated contra later digital dating developments. Elsewhere, we find Godliman trying to book a holiday and discovering that, in the age of the internet, the process has been recast as a high-stakes race against time.
As those examples imply, it’s not a conceit that greatly distinguishes Godliman from the many other comics exaggerating their dismay at modern living. Rare is the middle-aged joker without a routine educating young people about life pre-mobile phones – although they don’t all have lines as good as Godliman’s one about flirting and aubergines. Happily, that’s one example among many memorable word-pictures – like the one about using the breathing hole in massage tables to practise being a nun. In tandem with the 48-year-old’s mouthy persona – forthright of opinion but always happy to chuck herself under the bus – this ensures that Godliman’s 70-minute tour de familiar horizon never feels secondhand.
The show’s rhythm adjusts for its final third, when the After Life star tells longer-forms tales of performing childbirth on Call the Midwife and losing her cat when moving house. Both prioritise eye-opening incident over comic structure; there are laughs along the way, but muted climaxes. Both sell Godliman herself as the butt of the joke – but only insofar as we all are. Her foibles (nostalgia for doilies; loving camping a bit too much) are no crazier than yours or mine, her perspectives always relatable – even when they’re as clever as her advice to the data-harvesting internet, that her erratic online behaviour is a deeply dubious guide to who she actually is. Her comedy may be more so – and if it reveals a recognisable comedy type, it does so with vigour, charm and plenty good gags.
Kerry Godliman is at Bloomsbury theatre, London, on 5 February, then touring.
