Lucy Porter, Sherman Theatre

5:06pm Sunday 4th May 2008

IT WAS supposed to be a bitter and twisted look at love, but Lucy Porter's Love-In was anything but. welcome to her world of disastrous dates, PVC nurse's uniforms and imaginary dogs.

Porter's theory is that love is a mental illness - and that she is single because although men love Betty Blue'-type mad women, they simply don't appreciate her very British, slightly neurotic kind of madness.

She was on top form, wandering through internet flirting, books helping women market themselves to men and helping men buy the services of local girls in Bangkok, and her friends' attempts to get her paired off with a would-be husband.

Despite a recent set-back in love, Porter's astute comedy was never anywhere near cynical about relationships.

But then, when you are a woman who builds forts' from drying bedsheets and has a special song for doing the washing, how could you ever be?

Self-deprecating support act Michael Fabri also made a big impression on the crowd - hitting comedy gold when he discovered a retired embalmer was sitting in the front row.

His tale of how vets cannot wait to put a thermometer into his cat's behind was hilarious. But he met his match with a fantastic heckle moments later when he said he had been suffering from a cold.

"Get the thermometer..." shouted a wag in the audience.

There's just no come-back from that.

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