Review of the comedian's tour, being recorded at the Comedy Store

With age comes wisdom… and grouchiness. If the grumpy old curmudgeon is a comedy trope, it’s for very good reason.

As Kerry Godliman enters perimenopause – a condition only discovered by Davina McCall in 2021, she jokes – she’s not just crotchety but downright furious. Now 51, she’s in the zero-shits-given stage of her life, mad as hell with every stupid irritant that she just doesn’t have the bandwidth to deal with – and not caring who knows it.

How furious is she? Even David Attenborough attracts her ire… while she becomes full-on She-Hulk when she recalls not being able to get her hands on HRT.

She rails against everything from online influencers to the ‘are you a robot?’ Captcha tests with a thermonuclear passion weaponising her many frustrations for comedy. There’s even a snipe at Josh Widdicombe and Rob Beckett – with whom she shares an agent –  for their parenting podcast.

Being an angry, impatient middle-aged woman has done nothing to dim her long-held status as the comedy circuit’s Ms Relatable. In fact it’s enhanced it, given the roars of support her rants attract from the audience at London’s Comedy Store as she records this show for her next special. 

In some ways, her outbursts are a defiant response to generations of women not being able to talk about menopause, or being made to feel guilty about what they wear, how they look, and what decisions they make as a mother.

But largely any blows against a misogynistic society go unsaid, save one explicit swipe against the patronising phrase ‘girl-maths’.  Godliman also raises the question whether her increasing intolerance is the result of falling oestrogen levels – or  just an entirely reasonable response to a world full of awfulness – and the answer may well be both.

The Taskmaster and After Life star rants herself hoarse, with her furious stand-up further enlivened by embittered turns of phrase and absurd images like the ‘pin-headed giant’ she hallucinates after taking a fall in Soho.

She’s decided just wants a peaceful life now, spending her time gardening and watching whittling videos online, though that seems like an unachievable nirvana. And she’s just as madly passionate talking about her likes as her dislikes.

Some of the topics might be familiar subjects for stand-up, such as the school WhatsApp group and its bitchier splinter group, but that’s surely because they are universal topics, as the wildly enthusiastic audience response proves. But she makes her points eloquently and wittily. 

Also typical of her generation of comedians is to rail against younger people, made personal in her case as the mother of a Gen-Z daughter. Social media obsessions, tattoos and the phrase ‘not gonna lie…’ presaging an unasked-for critique all push her buttons.

But not gonna lie, Godliman’s fury is cathartic, voicing frustrations her audience share but in a far more pointed, amusing, and vigorously expressed way than they ever could.

» Kerry Godliman’s Bandwidth tour continues in the autumn. Kerry ​Godliman tour dates.

Review date: 16 Jul 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Comedy Store