Time for a light-hearted review: 

Unusual for a school night, last week I went to see Nina Conti perform at the Tricycle Theate in Kilburn. 

My boyfriend and I had spent one evening some time last year watching compilations of her performances on Youtube having seen her perform on Live at the Apollo on TV.

Nina has been doing performances quite a bit throughout London recently - Kilburn was a bit more a trek than usual but the Tricycle Theatre is a really intimate and quirky location for stand-up. We had really good seats too!

She was really confident and charismatic, she wasn't phased even by the most awkward or uncooperative of audience members! The act was only around an hour long but it felt much longer and was probably of a good length as it didn't drag at all - perhaps if it went on for longer we would've gotten a bit bored.

Unlike traditional ventriloquists, Nina doesn't just work with a hand puppet - she asks audience members to come up on stage and gets them to wear a face mask with a movable mouth so that she speaks for them. This did lead to a bit of an awkward situation where a particularly boisterous member of the audience suddenly decided he wasn't going to cooperate on stage, but Nina handled it well and we were still in fits of laughter!

I have a feeling that 'Monk' her monkey puppet, is the voice in her head which announces the elephant in the room...like acknowledging that he doesn't exist or that he can't talk without her! Her act may not be to everyone's taste but I still think it's downright funny and also pretty clever!

To see when she's next performing take a look at her website. 

Have you seen Nina Conti perform? What do you think of her act? Leave your comments in the section below!