There are some comedy shows that, in the words of Tom Lehrer, “help you forget, perhaps, for a while, your drab wretched lives.”

Humanity’s Last Hope, Kate Smurthwaite’s 16th one-woman show which premiered at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, is not one of those comedy shows.

Kate Smurthwaite, displaying the courage of someone who has stared into the dark abyss that is Piers Morgan three times and lived to tell the tale of just how much censorship is involved in ‘Piers Morgan Uncensored’, tackles the Five Horsepeople of the Apocalypse head-on (if you thought there were only four of them, well, inflation in the UK is roughly twice as bad as it is here). The result is grimly funny and occasionally even a touch macabre, so if you like your comedy dark, this is definitely a show for you.

Her discussion of War isn’t limited to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but treats it as a symptom of a larger problem – the greed that has led to Famine and the aforementioned inflation, only part of which can fairly be blamed on the idiocy of Brexit. Pestilence, of course, is COVID, which led to much harsher lockdowns in London than in Perth (you think we had it tough last Fringe? Try weeks of not being permitted to leave the house more than twice a day and trying to distract yourself with memes of cats on glass tables). Death is climate change coming for us all. And the fifth horseperson of the apocalypse is the Media.

Bleak as this may sound, Smurthwaite – an award-winning comedian, left-wing activist and polyamorous feminist - manages to find humour in looming disaster, and even has helpful suggestions for how we might prevent the apocalypse.

Highly recommended, except possibly for climate denialists, anti-vaxxers, devout monarchists, and Piers Morgan fans (if such a being could be imagined). See it while we can still laugh.