“WHEN I go out for the evening, I like to know when it’ll be over and I can finally take my bra off.”

Sarah Millican began as she intended to go on: honestly.

The Manchester comic , who gleefully mocks herself for having a full blown ‘cake shelf’ where most women’s ‘muffin top’ would be, is surprisingly blue on stage.

There was the usual TV-friendly routine; her obsessive love of animals, the perks of living alone post-divorce, a sixth sense for a good cake shop and a compulsion to buy baby clothes despite not wanting children… Audience participation in this laid-back, chatty show was key; we were asked for the best things about being male or female (breasts came top on both lists), to yell out the best biscuits we’d ever had for giving blood and how we unwind (Sarah likes a cup of tea in the bath).

To a point, the straight forward Bridget Jones/dowdy-single-girl act. But actually most of what the charming 35-year-old said, the material that had the Tivoli rolling around in the aisles, I can’t print. Scatological and very frank about her sex life, the straight-talking Millican eagerly welcomed us into her dippy world and showed us her feisty side.

The quick quips and revelations made the evening fly by and soon it was half past 10, when Sarah could break out of her prison and take that bra off.