STAND-UPS find their inspiration in truly bizarre places. Take Jo Caulfield’s latest show, Better the Devil You Know, which came about after a conversation with a member of her audience.

Caulfield says: “Five years ago I got married in New York. At a recent gig, I was talking to a woman who’d done the same thing.

“She said, ‘Wasn’t it easy? Pay $50, get your licence, three minutes later, you’re done. The hardest part is when you get back to Britain and you have to fill in all the paperwork and register it here’.

“Suddenly, I felt my blood go cold. I didn’t know we had to do that.

“Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: I’m not actually married to my husband!”

The realisation she was, in fact, a single woman, got Caulfield thinking. Perhaps it was time to give her man an appraisal.

She adds: “So I went out to the pub with him and his friends.

“Basically, I discovered when men get together, they exchange facts.

“They don’t actually have conversations. They just swap an interesting football fact for a film one, and vice versa.”

A regular on many TV and radio panel shows, including Mock the Week and Have I Got News for You, Caulfield was recently nominated as the best female comic in the UK.

As well as making fun of the husband, her new show will also be packed with Caulfield’s trademark material – swiping at the annoyances of every day life.

Caulfield says: “Like the other day when a short woman asked me to get something off the top shelf at a supermarket for her.

“Which would have been OK if she hadn’t done it like she expected me to do it for her. What if I hadn’t – or asked her to get something of the bottom shelf for me?”

Jo Caulfield’s Better The Devil You Know Colchester Arts Centre, Church Street, Colchester. Friday. Doors open at 8pm for 8.30pm start. £12, £10 concessions.
01206 500900