As someone who has visited Alice Springs, I can agree that there can have been nothing anonymous about Fiona O’Loughlin’s AA meetings there. The spunky 48-year-old mother of five has had a very public battle with alcohol (which apparently came to a head the night before she was to appear on the Australian version of Strictly Come Dancing). When she arrived at AA she asked if she could be upgraded from beginner’s to advanced, and that kind of sums up her extreme personality.

Now sober, O’Loughlin seems still to amuse herself with some of the “scrapes” she got into while inebriated (she calls these her “red flag” moments).

Hitting rock bottom at the Melbourne Comedy Festival comes back to haunt this show in a memorably humorous way (which she asked not to be revealed, so I won’t). Her best anecdote was about meeting the Queen in an outpost in Alice Springs (look out for the Duke of Edinburgh’s one-liner) and her Oprah impersonation was absolutely priceless, especially as Australia went nuts for the chat-show host when she deigned to visit earlier this year.

She’s a spunky Aussie who has a quip for everything with a certain slightly crinkled grandeur: Liz Taylor meets Clive James with the delivery ofJo Brand.

For tales of rehab recovery, her family’s annual incest prevention plan and more, she won’t mind if you raise a glass to her good health (though she may nip out for a fag).

Marianne Gunn

*****

I wasn’t sure quite what to expect from O’Loughlin, a pretty middle-aged mother of 5. Then she spoke … and from the outset, I and the rest of the audience was mesmerised! It’s clear to see exactly why O’Loughlin has taken Oz by storm; as she is quite the celebrity in her own right over there.

O’Loughlin unapologetically launches into a canded tale of her recovery from destructive alcoholism – a subject matter which could easily have come across as self-indulgent from a less skilled comic.  O’Loughlin, with her I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude, regales us of drunken escapades dancing on tables, getting naked and using the F-word in front of the Queen. She laughs gleefully at the ‘red flags’she ignored – the neglect of her children (I used to fry garlic to make them think I’d cooked …. It lifted the mood of the house for a few minutes); the loss of friends and alienation from her husband.

Candidly exploring her journey of transformation from the woman you couldn’t get rid of at parties; ‘grand mal hangovers’ and going to the AA because she loved the horrendous rock bottom stories …. there wasn’t one single point in O’Loughlin’s performance when I didn’t want it to go on forever!

O’Loughlin is a two-faced, manipulative, hypochondriac bitch with an opinion on everything. She uses people for cigarettes, thinks everyone is a fuckwit and is basically a walking menopause. She’s me in 30 years time and I fucking love her! I could listen to her all evening. This is a must-see show!

http://sgfringe.com/category/reviews/comedy/fiona-o’loughlin-spirited/