Scottish fortune teller Moira Mackenzie – Kiwi Guy Langford in floaty skirts and kitschy jewellery – has descended from the Highlands to work her slightly shonky magic and help us divine our future, which may or may not include astronauts, dancers, a new flag and maybe even death.

Her schtick combines quasi-philosophical musings and extremely suspect psychic twinges with cheeseball game show segments, so the show, Moira’s Wheel of Fortune, feels like a cross between a chatty tea-and-bikkie break at a spiritualist’s crystal shop and a late-night repeat of The Generation Game. It’s delightful.  

This is perhaps the friendliest show I’ve attended at the World Buskers Festival. Moira sets the audience at ease as we wait in the rain (many thanks to the door staff, too, for sussing us some umbrellas pinched from the décor of the Le Tigre Bleu tent), and the audience participation in the game show rounds is warm and non-threatening.

The night I attend the audience is on the small side – an indication of the persistently rubbish weather, not the quality of the show – and Moira maintains a genial intimacy throughout, encouraging us and berating us in turn until the spirits give her the readings that she wants.

One of my favourite aspects of the show is the way it dances around our familiarity with the tropes of both game shows and participatory cabaret revues, so that the inevitable inclusion of audience members is met with a knowing wink-wink-nudge-nudge, rather than trepidation. This is supported by the suitably stylised sound, lighting and smoke effects, which veer between the chintzy and the portentous. 

The mark of a good entertainer is their ability to keep things mostly together when everything goes tits up, and things certainly get a bit hairy when we all realise that, in the gloom, the woman Moira’s brought up on stage to compete in a ‘Blind Date’ round with three much older men is, in fact, a thirteen year old girl. Oops.

Moira ploughs ahead in abject mortification, swiftly adjusting what would normally be a cheekily risqué round on the fly, in the hope that CYFS doesn’t storm the tent. It’s beautifully and carefully managed, and never at the expense of the teen, and it serves as an hilarious, albeit unexpected, finish to a really satisfying and well-pitched show.

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