Star rating: **
Loosely basing her show on that Monday morning highlight of the school week, when primary pupils have to tell teacher and the rest of the class all about their action-packed Saturday and Sunday, Maeve rambles through a whimsical hour suggesting her weekend was less than spectacular.
Opening and closing with pre-recorded readings from her 90-year-old grandpa John Kidney, is a cute device but rather undermines everything his grand-daughter does in between. Despite a rather thrown-away, self-conscious gag about having a family all bearing the names of internal organs.
Maeve hails from Cobh in Cork Bay in the south of Ireland, where she and her seven siblings were kept in line with tales of the threats posed by neighbouring islands - notably prison-housing Spike Island - but none of them, surprisingly enough, called Craggy. Because this is close to a real-life excursion into Father Ted territory, but the Celtic surrealism is diluted by Maeve's hesitancy and uncertainty, not helped by what may be first-night nerves.
Dealing with her fish phobia and putting the squeeze on 15-year-old Daisy, who suffers from a potentially dangerous propensity for spending endless hours on teenage networking website Bebo, and even taking advice from fridge magnets does create some momentum. But the quirkiness still comes over as awkward and the anecdotes have the air of apology, which also hangs over the closing recycled puppet show.
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