HER mother ribs her that she moans for a living, but in truth, performance poet Hollie McNish refreshes the parts other rhymesters just can’t reach.

Benjamin Zephaniah rates her, Pink retweeted her and her performance of Embarrassed, in which she describes withdrawing to a public toilet to breastfeed her daughter, has been shared more than a million times.

On Saturday night, Hexham similarly took her to its heart.

There was silence at times as the really rather genteel audience listened with rapt fascination as she bared all, and then huge belly laughs as she touched a chord – with the women in particular.

Her new book, Nobody Told Me, is a collection of poems and diary entries written roughly over a four-year period, beginning from the moment she discovered she was pregnant.

“I found out I was pregnant on the way to Glastonbury Festival,” she said.

“I was sitting there, panic stricken, sh*****g myself, for three days and then I started writing like mad.

“I apologise for the swearing, by the way – I hope I don’t offend anyone here tonight – but my grandmother says parents are allowed to swear.”

Her appearance, more that of a young, fresh teenager than the 32 she actually is, made her delivery all the more powerful. And she doesn’t half pack a punch!

Perhaps it’s because she herself is the daughter of a nurse (your body is nothing to be ashamed of, we’re all human, etc.) that has imbued her with such fearlessness when it comes to saying it as it is.

A spade is a spade in McNish’s hands.

But what made the pain, confusion, guilt and anger so very palatable was the luxuriously lyrical quality of her verse, and the fact it was washed down with a magnum of humour.

The size of the fetus had been charted by the size of the fruit or vegetable it had attained that month.

‘Your baby’s the size of a cherry ... an aubergine ... a banana,’ she was told.

She couldn’t eat Mr Whippy ice cream while pregnant, however, she could down any amount of Tesco’s own.

But the sense of levity ended in the delivery room. “Salt n Pepper’s Push It wasn’t as funny on the birthing plan as I’d thought,” she said.

Thereafter, her readings reflected the almost insurmountable dichotomy of being an exhausted life-support to this helpless, but demanding few pounds of human existence, while at the same time fulfilling the role of sexual partner in an adult relationship.

And then there was the ambivalence in society that led her to withdraw, embarrassed, to feed her daughter while perched on toilet seats.

‘Now, the comments around me cut like a knife

As I rush into toilet cubicles

feeling nothing like nice

Because I’m giving her milk that’s not in a bottle

Which in the cocaine generation white powder would topple

I see pyramids, sales pitches, across our green globe

And female breasts – banned – unless they’re out just for show’

Expect to hear more, much more, from the Cambridge graduate who already has the UK poetry championships and the World Poetry Slam finals as notches on her belt.