The term ‘YouTube sensation’ might now be almost as redundant and meaningless as ‘genius’ or ‘hilarious’ with everything and everyone being dubbed that. But with 2.5m subscribers to her channel and her videos having received over 250m views, Miranda Sings can lay claim to that title without any fear of contradiction.

Mucking about in your bedroom or on the beach in front of a camera is one thing, getting up on stage and recreating the ‘magic’ is quite another. But the shows she put on during this year’s Edinburgh Fringe proved that Colleen Ballinger (sorry to break the illusion for anyone that Miranda Sings might actually be real) had a few interesting tricks up her sleeve in between the ‘songs’ and awkward audience interaction.

The problem a character act has when playing more than one person on stage is the physical transformation between personae. Most will simply pop behind the curtain and use a voice track to distract the audience from the fact nothing is going on in front of them while changing their kit and make-up. Ballinger solves this by slowly becoming Miranda in front of us, slipping ill-fitting trousers and a buttoned-up shirt over her cocktail dress, daubing the lipstick across her mouth while her lovely singing voice steadily breaks out into the off-tune wail and badly-pitched mewl that has previously slaughtered covers of Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj and Sia.

It’s fair to say that Miranda is not going to be for everyone and that watching someone being deliberately bad for an evening might seem like a waste of people’s time. But if audiences merrily pile through the door on a regular basis to see a bigoted pub landlord for fun, then why shouldn’t people lap up Miranda Sings?

City Halls, Glasgow, Sun 16 Nov.

Nicki Minaj - ANACONDA (Miranda Sings Cover)