Five ladies of highly diversified shapes and sizes have decided to attend pole dancing classes in a dingy village hall up north. There’s Bev (Lisa Riley), who delights in flaunting her many wobbly bits. There’s screechy-voiced Faith (Emily Aston), there’s super-tactless Tricia (Julie Buckfield), and there’s cool Rita (Lorraine Hodgson). Finally there’s Sarah, who is pencil-slim, and considerably older than the rest of the class. The instructor is bossy Gabby (Abi Titmuss).

Not being exactly ultra fit, the girls need frequent breaks. So, surprise, surprise, the conversation soon turns to sex. “Has he got a big one?” asks Tricia. “I beg your pardon?” comes the shocked reply. “I’m talking about his car,” Tricia explains, far from convincingly.

Faith emits a banshee wail when questioned about her date with a new boyfriend: “Did you touch his willy?” She is refreshingly innocent – when told that Rita’s husband enjoys seeing his wife in both her nurse’s and her traffic warden’s uniforms, she asks: “Do you have two jobs then?”

Meanwhile Sarah (Trudie Goodwin) looks on, appalled. This cannot require much acting on Goodwin’s part: for 23 years she played the level-headed, wholesome Sgt June Ackland in ITV’s The Bill. What is this sex-obsessed world she has stumbled into? At least she gets a solid storyline when, just before the interval, The Naked Truth suddenly decides to address the serious issue of breast cancer.

Actually the whole cast does the very best it can with the material it’s given. “The trouble with this show is that it has been written and directed by men,” my wife said afterwards. “The script uses every entry in The Oxford Book of Women’s Clichés.” But fair’s fair, I must also report that a friend, who’d come for a girls’ night out with her colleagues from a local doctors’ surgery, was thoroughly enjoying the show when we met in the interval.

The Naked Truth has completed its Oxford run, but tours to the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham from July 1-4. Tickets: 01242 572573 or www.everymantheatre.org.uk