We used to be a nation divided by class; nowadays we form our prejudices on the basis of taste. Nothing screams new money like a Hummer, nothing says middle class like a taste for Tuscany.

It’s no surprise, then, to hear Claire Dowie’s new stand-up theatre show, Buy Little Buy Less, ended with a hot debate involving the entire crowd after its last performance.

Yes, we all have to shop, and if it is the method by which we grade our social standing, everyone has a stake – whether they like it or not.

Dowie certainly despises the endeavour, and her horrid experiences are the starting point for a performance that will appeal to anyone who has ever felt empty after consumptive gluttony.

“I will go into a shop as myself but then panic, think it’s not me, and only be able to concentrate on getting out,” she says in a trepid, almost pitiful tone. “Just going shopping itself is hell. I really hate it.

“Big clothes shops such as TK Maxx are the worst. For me it’s the amount of people, but it’s such a fascinating, weird thing because it has so many different meanings for so many different people. I suppose that’s why there is such interest in it.

“It’s a nice issue to explore. I love the idea of exploring carbon footprints, capitalism and those things, but not as some political diatribe. I wouldn’t stay to listen to that kind of garbage. To make something interesting you have to look at it from an interesting point of view. That’s my objective anyway.”

It is clothes shopping which proves especially absorbing for Claire. “Clothes define so many people’s personality: what they wear, what they buy, how much they can afford to spend.”

Supermarkets, too, are almost as important. “Which supermarket you shop in defines you. Do you go to Waitrose or do you go to Lidl? I hadn’t even thought about things such as that and all this stuff came up in this post-show discussion. Shopping really is a loaded subject.”

Buy Little Buy Less sees Claire transform the idea of not being able to shop because she hates it so much into a new disease sweeping the nation called shopaphobia, “inconspicuous non-comsumption”.

She cut her teeth as a stand-up comic and, as with that discipline, this new project will develop as it tours, with jokes added and removed in line with audience response.

Her previous show H to He, whose twisted cabaret theatre proved so successful it was on the road for four years, pushed a 20-something girl’s uncertainty to such an extremity she became a man.

Buy Little Buy Less, which asks what would you do if you lost the ability to shop, honours that radical tradition.

“Great entertainment takes things to an extreme and in theatre that’s what gives it its drama. What’s the next logical step when you hate shopping so much?

“Imagine. You can’t buy clothes, you can’t buy shoes, you can’t buy anything – so what do you do? You just cannot go out and go into a shop. Imagine. What would you do, Dom? What would you do?”

Arrrgh...

*Starts 8pm, tickets £7/£5. Call 07800 983290.