She brings her new show Smashing to Wangaratta on Friday, April 28, and Albury the following night, with a performance also scheduled for Benalla on June 3.

In it she tackles lovesongs, sex, algorithms, chimps, clowns and psychics.

“I’m not a clever, surreal kind of comic. I just do, ‘It’s funny because it's true’ stuff,” she told Fairfax Media.

“The best feedback I can get after a show is when people say to me, ‘Oh my god, it is like you were in our lounge room’.”

It is a winning approach.

Flanagan is a writer and performer and a regular performer on ABC television’s The Weekly with Charlie Pickering.

Previously she appeared in her own segment on The Project every Tuesday. 

She plays public relations manager Rhonda Stewart in the ABC bureaucracy comedy series Utopia and shows up regularly on the comedy news quiz program, Have You Been Paying Attention?

Flanagan has become one of Australia’s best known comedians and has performed all over the world and tours Australia relentlessly.

She hosted the Opening Night Comedy Allstars Supershow to launch the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which started on March 29 and runs until Sunday.

“It’s a lovely gig for any performer, walking out in front of 2000 people and making sure they have a good time,” she told a Melbourne newspaper last month.

She also hosted the comedy festival gala in 2010 and has been a regular on the international comedy circuit for several years, performing in Japan, France, Germany and Holland and major festivals including Edinburgh Festival, Just For Laughs in Canada and the Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny.

Flanagan had several career false starts – from a rural radio news and weather reader, waitress,  lasted only three weeks cleaning and packing crayfish in a Geraldton crayfish factory, physical education teacher, advertising, copywriting and working in a pub –  before trying stand-up comedy.

Her first break came in 1995 when she landed a spot on TV sketch comedy show Full Frontal – the Logie Award-winning series which launched the careers for a host of stars including Eric Bana, Shaun Micallef, Julia Morris, Glenn Butcher, Kym Gyngell and John Walker.