When Sarah Millican graces the stage of the Derngate auditorium it’s always something to look forward to – often for at least a year! This is the fourth time we’ve seen her, and each time she packs out the audience, delivering what you can only describe as an abundance of joy. For her latest show, Late Bloomer, she hangs the concept on the show on whether you were a late bloomer (as which she identifies) or an eager beaver, and Ms M has a handy list of clues to help you assess whereabouts on the scale you are. I too identified as a late bloomer, but with little tinges of eager beaverness around the edges.

Through the course of a couple of hours, she explores all sorts of domestic and – let’s not beat about the bush (one of her favourite words) – sexual situations. A night with Sarah Millican is not for the prudish. If you’re expecting a discourse on culture and the arts, you might be a trifle disappointed. You will, however, get great insight into the various levels of painful or excitable reactions that her vagina undertakes on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Not that she often calls it a vagina, mind you. I did reflect with some amusement how different it would be if a bloke came on stage to a house packed full of mainly blokes and spent two hours discussing the various shenanigans his willy got up to on the average day.

However, the boot’s on the other foot, and Sarah Millican is the supreme creative artist where it comes to the comedy of womanly woes. No aspect of the female anatomy is taboo as she mines terrific laughs out of sizes and shapes, sweatiness, smells and all manner of bodily fluids.

We explored the weird content of other people’s bags; those items that were confessed to on Wednesday were two mint tea bags, a podger (they really exist), and a “cock bottle opener.” After some questioning, Ms Millican elicited that this was a bottle opener that looked like a cock as opposed an opener for a “cock bottle”. We learned about the unexpected downside of switching your mobile provider to O2. The ladies in the audience (who were by far in the majority) were asked to grade the underwear they were wearing on the night from 1 (new) to 6 (far from new). Mrs Chrisparkle quietly admitted to a 2. We heard about how an orgy could resemble a car park (you had to be there) and the only possible reason for carrying some stilton around with you.

Sarah Millican treads a tightrope of material that is hugely larger than life and accentuates the utter ridiculousness of the human condition – yet at the same time is completely believable and recognisable, so that the audience rises to the challenge of becoming its own self-help group. For two hours she has us in the palm of her hand. She’d probably then clean us off with a wet wipe because we were sticky and disgusting.

Late Bloomer enjoys two nights at the Royal and Derngate this January and is returning in September, but there are only a handful of seats left for that gig. The tour continues throughout the UK and Ireland and a few Europe dates as well, right through to November. She may be a late bloomer but she’s making the most of it now.