Delivering a Netflix special and acclaimed, bestselling memoir have propelled Fern Brady to a level of fame that she’s deeply uncomfortable with, and never more so than when she suspects she’s being railroaded into representing an inspirational autism story. The Bathgate-born comic has always evinced a wariness of prevailing narratives about class, gender, religion and nationality, but her growing success has brought far greater perils of pigeonholing.

Brady’s account of meeting her intimidatingly upbeat and confident US agents, of appearing on The Great British Bake Off, and flirting with Strictly Come Dancing seem deliberately designed to self-sabotage her burgeoning celebrity status. Speaking candidly about her cosmetic enhancements and drug use also feel intended to keep the mainstream at arm’s length. But the incidents themselves come across as completely unaffected, her being honest and true to her nature. Almost in spite of herself, a lack of filter and the extremity of her dislikes is an attractive quality, magnified with the increasing stakes of her rising profile.

Certainly, it’s telling that she appears to have genuinely appalled one of her heroes, the outspoken and usually unflappable Miriam Margolyes, perhaps the exemplar of turning supposedly unacceptable behaviour into commercially marketable caricature. The vivid, pathetic picture that Brady paints of her fangirling over the Harry Potter star while her faculties were impaired, and of horrifying Bake Off judge Prue Leith with her genuine attempt to establish a bond, are so much more than the amusing faux pas of a fish out of water.

These awfully missed connections, as the comic’s neurodiverse perspective challenges social inhibition and the established protocols of making primetime television, are uproariously funny and edgily bleak without feeling try-hard. Elsewhere, her magic-mushroom escapade veers towards the self-indulgent. Yet unlike most (male) stand-ups seeking to find themselves with hallucinogens, Brady claims no grandstanding revelations from them, mercilessly interrogating her own bullshit as she does of others’.

Fern Brady: I Gave You Milk To Drink tours until Wednesday 20 November; reviewed at King’s Theatre, Glasgow; main picture: Raphael Neal.