Sarah Millican – Stand-Up DVD Reviews

2 photos of Sarah Millican, one with her wearing a red top and a necklace with the word No in red letters on the front of it, he other with her wearing a white, short-sleeved, scoop-necked top, that has lots of different coloured leaf-like shapes arranged in lines across it.

Updated since original publication to include all of her specials up to 2025.

I’ve been lucky enough to see Sarah Millican live in person on more than one occasion, and have had a great time as you can see from my reviews. She’s a wonderful observational comedian who covers a lot of different topics in her shows, including her relationship with her husband (fellow comic Gary Delaney) and her family, stories about other people she meets, and other general thoughts on many aspects of life. And she isn’t afraid to poke fun at herself along the way. There are also fun sections where she interacts with the audience too, invitig them to share their own stories or suggestions on particular topics.

So I own all of her shows on DVD as well, which I’m going to review in this post. Edited versions of these specials are sometimes repeated on Channel 4, and there are loads of clips on her Youtube channel. But there are some bonus features that are exclusive to the DVDs. So they’re all worth owning I think, and I hope you enjoy reading about them here.

Contents

Chatterbox

DVD cover for Chatterbox by Sarah Millican, showing her smiling and holding a microphone in front of a red background. She's wearing a black top with a white silhouette of a large leafy plant on it.

This show, filmed at the Bloomsbury Theatre, lasts 1 hour 40 minutes. Among the various topics, Sarah discusses a film called Chatterbox (a comedy about a woman with a talking vagina), living on her own, her boyfriend moving in for a few months, intruders, pets, giving blood, being stranded in Australia, cakes and puddings, being overweight, methods of relaxing, baths, sleep, driving, bidets, clothes shopping, spicing things up in the bedroom, going to a wedding, jewellery from her boyfriend, tiny baby jeans, and the effects of curry on a date night.

There are also a lot of amusing responses from the audience when she asks them to nominate the best things about being men and women, and things that have been broken during sex. Plus she comes across a lady who’s knitting during the show, and another guy who expresses a clear disgust for vaginas, much preferring the male anatomy instead.

One thing that Sarah doesn’t notice during the show, however, and neither did her production team while they were editing the footage, is a man fast asleep in the audience! He appears at around 34:37 on the DVD, and about 20 seconds earlier on the Youtube video. To be fair, he’s easy to miss, as he’s hidden in the dark, just up and to the right of the woman who had called out that always being right was the best thing about being female. But once you know he’s there, you can’t help but notice every time.

That may not seem like a big deal, but several people pointed it out to Sarah after the show was released, and it resulted in an amusing running gag on her later DVDs. So it’s actually quite relevant!

There are a few extras on the DVD as well, which you access via the animated menu that’s set in a café with cakes:

  • Interview by Joe Lycett – In this 12-minute mix of Q&A and banter, Joe poses a set of either/or questions for Sarah, followed by some questions from Twitter followers about punching people, her last meal on death row, her desert island supplies, and her thoughts on love. Then he sets her a taste test involving Victoria sponges, seeing if she can guess which retailer each one comes from. So it’s an interesting and fun little bonus.
  • 5 Top Tips For Divorce – A quick 3-minute feature where she gives some important advice on dealing with divorce, having been through it herself, with a slightly humorous slant on it of course.
  • Royal Variety Performance – This is her 5-minute set from this special show in 2010. Most of her jokes are shortened versions of those in the main Chatterbox show, which isn’t a surprise, including driving, intruders and calling her boyfriend while she’s away. But she also makes a joke about self-service checkouts, and overall it’s an enjoyable routine that makes Prince Charles laugh as well as the audience.
  • The Hair Of The Dead – Currently still available on the BBC Radio 4 website as I write this, from Series 5 of Comic Fringes, this is a 13-minute radio monologue from 2009 that Sarah wrote and performed, acting as a hairdresser working on a dead body in a funeral parlour. And it’s ok, with some amusing lines, but her stand-up is much better.

Thoroughly Modern Millican

DVD cover for Thoroughly Modern Millican by Sarah Millican, showing her standing in front of a microphone while wearing a green, short-sleeved, scoop-necked top with detailed flowery patterns on it.

This show from the Hammersmith Apollo lasts just under an hour and a half, and I like the fact that she enters to the tune of Our House by Madness. Subjects covered this time include exercise and trying to eat more healthily, her relationship with her boyfriend, going to a theme park, risk taking vs caution (aka bumper cars vs dodgems), learning about sex and how bodies change with age (including The Body Book by Claire Rayner), feeling sexy and confident, dirty talk in the bedroom, euphemisms, house-hunting, her love of swearing, running over a deer at night, her family, pets, eating a whole packet of Space Dust (a form of popping candy), and euphemisms for needing a poo.

There’s also quite a bit of enjoyable interaction with the audience, where she asks them about the signs of love, reasons for carrying spare pants, what you can use as an alternative if you run out of toilet paper, and the lies people were told about their pets dying.

The DVD menu represents a fairground this time, and the first extra is actually a hidden Easter egg. If you use the arrow keys to go up on the main menu, you can click on the big star in the middle of the Ferris wheel. This takes you to a secret moment from the show, where Sarah talks about the sleeping man from her first DVD, and invites the audience to recreate a similar moment that she can sneak into this second DVD for people to spot.

So a woman gladly volunteers, pretending to be asleep while everyone around her laughs raucously, and it’s exactly what Sarah wanted. But, as she then mentions in voiceover at the end, they didn’t need to use it after all, as they discovered another person sleeping for real during the edit anyway! Hence the fake sleeper became a hidden extra, while the real dozing lady was added around the 34 minute mark in the show, to match the time on the previous DVD. She’s at the bottom left of the screen, her head resting on her partner’s shoulder.

Apart from that, there are various other features available via the Extras menu:

  • Sarah’s Rider – An amusing little 2-minute sketch about her fictional backstage requirements, including rose petals in the toilet, M&M’s, KitKats and kittens.
  • Q&As – There are a couple of interesting interviews lasting about 18 minutes altogether. One is about Sarah herself, where she’s asked about films, TV, music, childhood, a typical day and her dream comedy line-up. Then the other is specifically about her comedy, where she talks about her actual tour rider (as opposed to the earlier sketch), starting and ending tours, winding down, having family in the audience, writing the shows, and tips for aspiring comedians.
  • BBC Radio 4 Programmes – There are a couple of audio extras, which are both currently still available online. The first is another Comic Fringes monologue, from Series 7, called Stairlift Us Up Where We Belong, where she plays an old woman talking about her life and the people she knows for about 12 minutes. The other feature is the first half-hour episode of Sarah Millican’s Support Group, where she acts as an agony aunt discussing what it’s like to dating out of your class (as in working class, middle class, etc), with the aid of audience members and so-called ‘experts’. There are one or two jokes that are recognisable from Sarah’s stand-up shows, but otherwise it seems original. Neither of those programmes held my interest as well as her live shows though, they’re not things I would listen to again particularly.

Home Bird

DVD cover for Home Bird by Sarah Millican, showing her standing with her hands on her hips against a light blue background, wearing a dark navy v-neck top. A chain around her neck has the word Home bird hanging from it in small blue lettering, with tiny birds attached to the first and last letters.

This show lasts for an hour and 40 minutes, and was filmed in her home town at the Newcastle Tyne Theatre. So there are a couple of fleeting local references, but nothing that interferes with the show. The focus of her show is on making changes in her life, to get out of a rut and freshen things up. And the many topics she addresses along the way include reacting to the heat in a rather intimate area, house-hunting and moving into her new home, getting new cats, relaxing, learning to cook, bad Christmas presents, a scary Warwick Castle Dungeon tour on her husband’s birthday (which actually sounds quite fun!), going shopping on her birthday, having a medical assessment, beauty advice in women’s magazines, getting a powerful new vibrator, a heartbreaking late-night discovery about a poem from her ex-husband, letting her partner move in to her new house, waving her partner goodbye when she goes away to various places, her family, getting older, and dawdling as a child.

The interactive audience segments on this occasion see Sarah asking what to do with a half-dead animal the cat brings in, and what to take on a dirty weekend, both of which bring the usual mixture of amusing and amazing replies.

And for the encore at the end of the show there’s a special appearance by Phil Creswick from the group Big Fun. Earlier in the show Sarah talks about that group’s version of Blame It On The Boogie, and how she was forbidden by her mother from doing a seemingly sexual move to the line “don’t blame it on the good times” when dancing along to it. So Sarah gets Phil, and the audience, to join in with the amended version of the dance that she had been forced to do. It’s a great lively way to finish the show.

The extras are accessed via a menu system that reflects a homely environment, with a breakfast table for the main menu, while the extras menu is laid out like a TV’s electronic programme guide. There are 3 extras altogether:

  • Sleeping Audience Member – This 10 minute extra continues the running gag that began with her first DVD. Once again Sarah gets an audience member to pretend to be asleep while everyone laughs around them. But then she attempts to reverse it by getting the entire audience to pretend to be asleep while just one person laughs hysterically. It’s funny to watch because of how chaotic it ends up being, with the first woman she chooses being too quiet, while the second has clearly had far too much to drink!
  • Interview With Dad – In this 19 minute feature Sarah asks her Dad a variety of questions about his life, his memories of her and thoughts on her comedy, his advice on some situations, and more. It’s not hugely interesting, but he’s a nice bloke, and it’s great to see that he’s so supportive of her work.
  • Behind The Scenes On Tour  – Lasting 16½ minutes, this enjoyable feature includes short interviews with Sarah and her support acts (including Tom Allen and Andy Robinson), about how they prepare for the shows. Plus there’s some banter backstage with Tom Allen as they get ready to do a show in Wales, and a chat with the guys running the merchandise stall. And finally there’s a look at the first time Sarah did her Blame It On The Boogie routine on stage, filmed at an earlier preview show at the Glee Club in Birmingham, where she even got the other comedians from the event up on stage to do it with her, including Gary Delaney and Joe Lycett.

Outsider

DVD cover for Outsider by Sarah Millican, showing her standing in front of a colourful drawing of a green hill, fluffy white clouds and a bright blue sky. She is wearing a white, short-sleeved, scoop-necked top, that has lots of different coloured leaf-like shapes arranged in lines across it.

This show, filmed at the Brighton Dome, lasts for 1 hour 25 minutes. Here we find Sarah talking about things like weeing into a bottle while driving, living in the countryside, her cats, her new dog, encouraging wildlife into the garden, bath bombs, IBS, piles, her husband (she had got married to Gary since the last tour), self esteem about her body image, school, an email from an old bully, Standard Issue (a podcast she created to counter the unrealistic idealism and expectations that society and the media hold about women), men retaining different information to women (including a quiz of useless versus useful information), nagging, chatting before and during sex, being in her 40s, periods and going for a massage.

The audience interaction segment this time is all about the best things seen in nature. And at the end of the show she brings her adorable little dog on stage – before he darts away in terror when she takes her knickers off and waves them at him!

The extras on this DVD consist of:

  • Fan Questions with Tom Allen – A enjoyable 22-minute chat where Tom chats with Sarah about jungle luxuries, farting and thinking about food on stage, cats, drying laundry, eating in the cinema, foods she dislikes, what she would save in a house fire, ketchup, car boot sales, wearing shirts, feminine hygiene products, eating eggs, toilet brushes and more.
  • Another Sleeping Audience Member – For this final part of the running gag from her previous discs, lasting 9 minutes, it’s Sarah herself who pretends to be asleep in the auditorium, while Tom Allen comes on stage to direct everyone else to laugh around her.
  • Stripey Dressgate – A brief but funny 2 minutes of outtakes, where Sarah is having trouble with her dress getting creased up during the show.

Control Enthusiast

DVD cover for Control Enthusiast by Sarah Millican, showing a headshot of her against a turquoise background. She is wearing a red, scoop-necked top, revealing a necklace that has the word No in letters that are red and filled with white dots.

There are no extras on this DVD, you just get the main show. But it’s still a lot of fun, so that doesn’t matter. It lasts for 1 hour 20 minutes, and was filmed at the Birmingham Symphony Hall.

This time Sarah imparts her thoughts on another wide variety of topics including road rage hand gestures, sexual confidence, her rescue dog, difficulties talking to children, her mother, IBS, buying period sanitary products, her husband’s habits, sexual fantasies and self pleasure, an emotional film called Room, the movie Iron Man, shorthand code for fancying sex with your partner, spicing up your sex life, giving a urine sample, a holiday in New York, Naked Attraction, a false news story about her losing weight, body confidence, exercise, buying shampoo, painting her toenails, getting better at saying “No” to things (with a list of things she’s said no to), buying knickers,  difficulty sleeping, and her routine before going to bed. And there’s a very entertaining segment with the audience where she asks the women what they didn’t like about getting a bra fitting.

Bobby Dazzler

Front cover of the DVD for Bobby Dazzler by Sarah Millican, with a photo of the comedian smiling as she stands with her hands on her hips, wearing a dark dress with swirling patterns made up of red, yellow and blue striped lines.
Back cover of the DVD for Bobby Dazzler by Sarah Millican, featuring a few small photos of the show below the description of the DVD. The list of extra features includes an interview with Micky Noone, talks with Sarah about Taskmaster and her dresses, and a guide for Americans.

This tour included the first show of Sarah’s that I saw live, during my first ever visit to the Hammersmith Apollo. This particular recording, however, was made at the Orchard Theatre in Dartford. It was initially available to stream on her website, but due to popular demand a DVD was also released. It has a catchy 3-minute piece of music on the main menu, audio for the show in stereo or surround sound (though the latter’s hardly necessary), and English subtitles. And because I was one of the first set of customers to buy the show on her website, I also received a signed postcard from Sarah through my letterbox, which was a lovely surprise!

A postcard of Sarah Millican smiling as she stands with her hands on her hips, wearing a dark dress with swirling patterns made up of red, yellow and blue striped lines. Her name is above her head in big letters, while across the bottom of the image are the words Bobby Dazzler in large lettering, and much smaller text beneath that says 2021/2022 tour.
Handwritten text on the back of a postcard that says Love Sarah Millican X X.

The show itself is very funny of course. As well as explaining the title, Sarah talks about a variety of subjects including birthdays, bad compliments, eye tests, dentists, birthday parties, yoga, Couch To 5K, aromatherapy, online grocery shopping, chores, sleeping naked, pyjama slogans, falling over, the 7 signs of ageing, Madonna, sanitary towels, periods, pre-sex routines, smear tests, mammograms, dieting, pretending to play a recorder, having IBS, and cutting off the top of her finger. She also asks the audience about what they did during moments of madness during the pandemic, with responses including a baby, an engagement, a divorce, a lightsaber, a hot tub, and big poos!

The following extras are also on the DVD, which were initially available either with the online stream or on Youtube:

  • Interview – Here Sarah is interviewed for just over 20 minutes by Mickey Noonan, who runs the Standard Issue podcast, with some questions from Mickey herself and others from Sarah’s fans. They talk about how Sarah’s act has changed over the years, topics she would avoid on stage, the best audience responses to questions, using comedy to cope with tragedy, life lessons from doing stand-up, Linda Smith, honking, potatoes, snacks, pets, Muppets, school and superpowers. So it’s quite fun and interesting, they pack plenty into their discussion.
  • Taskmaster Reflections – An additional 4 minutes of interview time, where Sarah talks about her experience on Taskmaster.
  • Guide For Americans – Sarah performed in the US for the first time on this tour, and therefore had to adapt her script by changing some names and phrases that wouldn’t have made sense over there. So as the special is from her British tour, in this feature she spends 5 minutes going through the various translations for the benefit of her fans across the pond. It’s interesting to see just how much she had to alter.
  • Dresses – A fleeting clip where Sarah explains that she buys her dresses from a company called Zuri.

Late Bloomer

The front cover of Sarah Millican's Late Bloomer DVD, showing the comedian smiling while wearing a light orange top covered in images of open books with red covers.
The back cover of Sarah Millican's Late Bloomer DVD, showing three small photos of Sarah on stage above the description of the DVD and list of extra features.

This DVD came out just in time for Christmas in 2025 and was available to stream via her website. And again, it’s very funny, with some nice bonus material as well. It’s another show that I had the pleasure of seeing at the Hammersmith Apollo, but this 90-minute special was filmed at The Hexagon in Reading.

Wearing a lovely colourful outfit, she explains that the show is loosely about how she got from childhood to where she is now, having been inspired by a photo from her youth. And she discusses the differences in the people that she terms “late bloomers” and “eager beavers”, of which I can safely consider myself the former.

She then talks about a wide variety of topics. Some of them are naturally about things specific to her as a woman, so there is talk of things like smear tests, the life stages of knickers, different types of periods, trimming or waxing downstairs, and reading women’s magazines. But even to a bloke like me those sections are still very funny and not at all off-putting.

And beyond that there are many other routines about things like unwanted gifts, putting her back out, cleaning the toilet, having a night of debauchery with friends while in Canada, having an experience in a flotation tank, gaining access to age-restricted content on her phone, being an emotional person, the contents of her old school reports, and the Channel 4 sex documentary Open House, among other things.

The biggest and most memorable section though is about the contents of her handbag, because she gets several members of the audience to share the unusual things they carry about with them as well. So that results in some very amusing stories and interactions.

I won’t give away what items are revealed on the DVD, but to give a flavour of the type of responses she gets, people in the audience in the show I attended were carrying things like a voodoo doll keyring, poppers, a crochet hook and wool, and dog treats. Some of those audience members were given a round of applause at the end, but for a couple that weren’t quite as impressive Sarah got us all to do a single clap of the hands to acknowledge it without going further.

On the DVD though, nobody gets a single-clap response. They all get proper applause, because they all prove to be quite interesting to her (although she’s probably edited out the boring ones). There are some other examples from other gigs on her social media as well.

There’s over an hour of extras on the disc too that are worth going through, including:

  • Standard Issue – A 22-minute chat with her fellow members of the Standard Issue Podcast team (of which an extract is on Youtube).
  • Q&A – A 9-minute feature where she answers a wide variety of questions submitted on social media.
  • World Snacks – A half-hour feature where she tries local snacks in different countries on her tour with her support acts.
  • Late Bloomer Theme Song – A country-style track used on the tour that Sarah helped to write.

Conclusion

So that’s it, I hope you enjoyed reading about those shows. She’s still as funny as always, and I like how she provides a selection of extras on her DVDs that aren’t just your bog-standard Live At The Apollo appearances or video diaries or things like that. She always makes the effort to be original.

After that last DVD, we learned that it’s the last we’ll be seeing of Sarah on stage for a little while. Having done 2 world tours over 4½ years, she’s taking a well-earned break to relax with her husband and her dog. But hopefully she’ll return to stand-up in the future.

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Author: Glen

Love London, love a laugh, love life. Visually impaired blogger, carer, accessibility advocate, culture vulture and London explorer.