The title of this hour, like much of Catherine Bohart’s comedy, is inspired by her family. They have been one of the constants in the Irish lesbian OCD comic’s (her description) shows and Borrowing Trouble is no exception.
It’s her father’s phrase to describe her tendency to worry about things that may never happen, and it’s one of the many happenings in Bohart’s life that she discusses with great honesty. She is, she admits at the top of the show, an oversharer, despite her attempts not to be. (It is, by the way, the first time I’ve heard a comic describe their “uptight pelvis”.)
Bohart muses on buying her first home, Irish identity, Catholicism and mental health, and draws a line between those things in a thoroughly entertaining hour. The show is gag-heavy, so if you miss one, there’s another that follows soon after.
There’s much to enjoy in her anecdotes about buying a property with her girlfriend, not least how she might cope with her OCD now that there’s someone to see it up close and personal every day. Start seeing her fifth therapist, is the answer.
Bohart is thoroughly engaging, too, about why she is not a fan of lesbian weddings (an anecdote about which provides a great callback later), and the perfect length of a Christmas visit to her family.
Some weighty subjects get an airing – her mental health, how Catholicism supplies her inner monologue despite her rejection of the faith – but then Bohart quickly segues into her love of dogs (but not of dog people), the lesbian throuple next door, or customer service at John Lewis.
And peppering the show are some delightfully waspish references to how women’s health has gone from being unmentionable to celebrities continually talking about childbirth or the peri-menopause, or how age-old antagonisms between Ireland and England play out in her head.
Bohart talks a mile a minute but she keeps the wide-ranging subject matter flowing seamlessly. And the high joke count and her self-aware wit, meanwhile, remind us this is comedy, not therapy.
