Kate Smurthwaite has appeared on shows ranging from The Bachelor to Question Time to Piers Morgan Uncensored (unfortunately, that description doesn’t also apply to the guests) as well as making frequent appearances at Fringe festivals.

Her new show, Fire Snake, is less political than her show last year, Humanity’s Last Hope, and the comedy is distinctly less consistently dark. She makes some pointed comments about British politics (she attended the same Oxford college that Rishi Sunak did, graduating the year he began there, and has stories to tell of how he celebrated Mardi Gras during his student days that may help you to understand his politics), but this show is mostly a story of her travels in Jordan with a French tour guide, and partly a satire of modern advertising.

Her ability to segue between these topics and others is a major part of the comic effect and had the capacity audience (including me) on its opening night laughing almost non-stop with occasional pauses for applause.

John Cleese has described Kate as “fun, energetic and full of ideas”: her energy and sense of fun are undeniable, but it’s her willingness to explore different ideas without prejudice that makes her shows special. She displays both wit and humour: she can see, and point out, the funny side of things while acknowledging that they are serious – and not just when they are seriously bad.

She examines different approaches to situations that might seem inappropriate in our culture and environment while acknowledging that they are extremely well suited to the way other people live, and not all of them involve robots, whips, camels or scorpions.

Inevitably, the show does feature adult themes and occasional coarse language, though not as much of it as you might expect when the topic changes to politics. See it if you can; it’s worth the money just to hear why it’s called ‘Fire Snake’.