It’s known in comedy circles that Lulu Popplewell has the best secret weapon in showbiz. How can you not immediately be on side when a comic enters the room and hands you the world’s smallest, cutest, most well-behaved dog to look after for the duration of the show?

Dotty is more than just a comedic familiar though; she’s also a trained psychiatric assistance animal, able to sense out and help people in psychological distress. 

It’s assistance that’s been helpful to Popplewell over the last couple of years, not just because of the Pure OCD, the bipolar, the CFS, the anxiety and the depression, but also presumably for the steady flow of shit romantic partners. It’s war stories (and the occasional song) about these guys that forms the bulk of her material in this, her treatise on love.

Love is great, she tells us. On the other hand it’s also a foetid rancid nightmare that, for a single woman in her thirties, takes place in short bursts on apps and through unfortunate encounters in the bedroom, like the guy whose idea of foreplay involves gnawing on her fingers like an ogre. 

Love is a bit like childbirth, she thinks: as a woman, you’re biologically programmed to forget your latest horrific dating experience, ‘so that you open your legs again for another screaming idiot who’s obsessed with your tits.’

Popplewell’s progress in the industry has sometimes unfortunately felt like it’s been hampered by her chronic illness, but she’s a smart and underrated performer – a strong all-rounder who knows her areas of expertise. 

Performing with a brittle but infectious cheerfulness, there’s never any doubt that her mad stories are things that have actually happened to her. She doesn’t dissemble, but she’s also able to write sharp, unexpected jokes around her experiences to leaven the impact of what are occasionally pretty heavy themes.

Much of it relates to two of her most significant exes. One is a mysterious unnamed guy who’s stuck in her mind like a limpet and provides a poignant edge to her struggles to move on. The other, in a bit of Britcom gossip, is a former stand-up himself who she does name, a seeming sociopath who I undestand had to flee the UK comedy scene after many allegations about his appalling behaviour towards women.

Throughout it all, Popplewell keeps the tone light, perhaps to a fault, minimising the psychic toll on herself as well as the audience but occasionally leaving us with the sense that she’s skating over her feelings for levity’s sake. It’s no strike against her sterling work in this show, though – the poor woman’s been through enough.