There are plenty of Taskmaster alumni at this year's Edinburgh Fringe – Rosie Jones, Ivo Graham, Mike Wozniak, Ed Gamble, Nish Kumar spring to mind – but only one show here is about a former Taskmaster contestant. One who remains nameless on legal advice. We will find out why below.

 

Harriet Richardson makes it clear at the outset that she is not a stand-up comedian, but a performance artist. The roots of her show Creep go back to a project when she went viral after dating 100 men on Valentine's Day. This was no Lily Phillips stunt, however, this was art and the dates were all online. Some silly, some flirty, one involving a very bad version of spaghetti bolognese.

 

The anonymised comedian in question must have been tickled by the project because he contacted Richardson and also asked for a date. For a while they communicated in the virtual world and things got fairly saucy, mainly on his part. Until his agent – worried about his career, his love life or both? –  stepped in and called a halt to proceedings.

 

But for Richardson the intervention was too late. She didn't stalk the man in question but she did circle his social circle, going to the Edinburgh Fringe, meeting people he knew, tracking down his ebay account and even buying an item of clothes he was selling. Being an oversharer she tells us all about this and then some. It's probably best at this stage that I don't say any more, but maybe the title doesn't just refer to types of men, it also refers to how obsession can creep up on you. 

 

Richardson might not be a comedian but she knows how to tell a story that has her audience both hanging on her every word and laughing loud and hard. And Creep is not just about this encounter, it is about Richardson and how she sees herself in the world. Another thing she did was to turn herself into a piece of art, having tattoos of the names of the mothers of all the men she has slept with inked on her body. An empowering, feminist act with, she reveals, some amazing consequences.

 

There are all sorts of strands to Creep, from echoes of Baby Reindeer to Tracey Emin. The way she finds the humour in tweets responding to her work is a rich comical seam – Adam Buxton has done similar, finding the comedy in YouTube comments. 

 

I've got my theory about who the object of her affections was. You might be playing a guessing game yourself by now. But finding out who it is is ultimately not the point. This is a show about Richardson delving into her own identity, her own sense of being. It's funny, it's about aspects of celebrity and it asks a very interesting question about how and where exactly the online world and the real world intersect.