Sue Perkins’ Eternal Shame review – Bake Off star revels in self-deprecation | comedy

S“Shame” is what Sue Perkins promises us in this return to live comedy after years of absence: her public persona pulled back like layers of a Russian doll to reveal the real, disgraced person underneath. Who wouldn’t want to see the former Bake Off star, after “30 years in our living rooms”, put on a show like this? But that’s not quite what Perkins offers. Like Dawn French before it, in a tour de force intended to show how “silly” she was, The Eternal Shame of Sue Perkins brings together a series of hilarious professional and personal anecdotes that are only loosely related to the subject, and is wise in its intimacies.

It’s stronger in the second half, which sticks more tightly to the theme and offers more glimpses behind our host’s snappy behavior. The first chapter begins with Perkins noting her shame at being middle-aged and tired in an industry reserved for youthful activity. The tales that follow have nothing to do with this at all, as they tell an inconclusive story about local drug dealers who cloned her car registration, and a literal shaggy dog ​​story, more suggestive of pride than shame, about saving a wounded puppy on a trip to Bolivia.

Either way, one can’t sense whether Perkins has let the truth get in the way of the lively comic narrative. And sure enough, she tells them well, embroidering each of them with horrific details of her ineptitude. See, for example, the bitter tale, all sobs and dry sobs, of a TV drug addict’s journey to a South American shaman. This sitcom isn’t the only one to exploit Perkins’ public life for comedy: another great Dave Gorman-style routine, about a story she wrote for a celebrity anthology, is obsessed with the statistical probability of “getting annoyed by Dyson.”

But beyond the world of showbiz, the show’s most striking segment revolves around the breakdown Perkins suffered a decade ago due to a benign pituitary tumor, which led her to the grandiose “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” scenario, vividly depicted here. The rest of the show, all cheerful tales of profound self-loathing, is entertaining enough. But it is here alone that the Russian doll’s protective shells are stripped away, and something far more important is revealed.