Six weeks ago, Stormy Daniels was in the witness box delivering evidence in one of the most explosive cases in the history of the United States.

At Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial, she told in lurid detail how she had slept with the former president and been paid for her silence.

Mr Trump was convicted and faces a possible prison sentence. It could change the course of the presidential election.

So it was with some bafflement that I shuffled into the back room of a cabaret club in New Orleans on Thursday to find Stormy – her porn actress pseudonym – delivering a standup routine.

She drew a crowd of 50 intrigued punters, who queued around the block, for the two-night run of “One Night Stand”.

I couldn’t help noticing, however, that she was playing second billing to an evening of “jockstrap lube wrestling” in the club’s bigger room.

The former adult star took to the stage in a sparkly bodycon dress comfortable in her home state, away from the gaggle of journalists and lawyers of the Manhattan court.

Reporters, in fact, were asked to stay away.

“This is NOT a press-friendly event so don’t ask,” the small print said.

The compere was her husband, Barrett Blade, whom she teased lovingly throughout the set.

The tickets were cheap and the jokes were crude.

“There were a lot of comics that were really pissed that I was doing stand-up, trust me,” she began, clutching a vodka and cranberry juice and glinting in the light of a tired disco ball.

“I don’t want to be standing either – I do my best work laying down. It was way more fun.”

What followed was an hour of revealing conversation about her journey from young porn starlet to America’s most unlikely political figure, peppered with anecdotes about porn sets and gags about her own anatomy – and the former president’s.

But the show, intentionally or not, also captured neatly what happens after the news cameras pack up the satellite trucks and roll away from a major US scandal.

What’s left when the story moves on is laid bare, so to speak, as Stormy took a small crowd of paying customers through her intimate ordeal – and, sadly, how it trashed her life.

Naturally, the spectre of the man she referred to only as the “orange hobgoblin” hung over the show.

The crowd cheered when she referred to his convictions and howled at her description of his genitals: “even smaller than his vocabulary”.

At least twice, she shuddered and took a sip of her drink at the thought of her famous sexual encounter with the former president, which she recounted at length during the trial.

She had time to mock Joe Biden, too, saying that during his speeches he appeared to be “buffering” as if on an internet dial-up connection.

The Trump case catapulted Ms Daniels into a fame stratosphere and brought a level of scrutiny and criticism with which she is clearly not comfortable.

Journalists, as much as the former president’s legal team, were the villains of the piece – for referring to her repeatedly as a “porn star” and not as a “creative”, a “mother” or an “equestrian”.

Guessing that some reporters may have slipped into the room, she told us baldly: “Go f*** yourselves”.

Some of that ire is clearly justified. One tabloid newspaper was singled out for posting her home address online after it was inadvertently revealed in court – an event she blames for the shooting of her horse some days later.

At her best, Ms Daniels was warm, likeable and revealing.

Close to the end of the show, she explained the home she shares with Mr Blade and their 13-year-old daughter will be repossessed next week to repay legal fees from a failed attempt to sue Mr Trump for libel in 2018.

Although the lawsuit was initially launched without her knowledge and then lost, Ms Daniels escalated her appeals to the Supreme Court and landed herself with $600,000 in costs for lawyers on both sides of the case.

“They’re taking my house next week,” she said. “We are living in an RV.”

Comparing the case to a similar suit brought against Mr Trump by E Jean Carroll, an author, Ms Daniels said she felt the legal system had failed her because she is a sex worker.

“They wouldn’t even hear me,” she said. “They wouldn’t let me take the stand.”

With that bill in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that the crowd was encouraged to visit a merchandise stand on the way out.

At the end of the set, those in the front row were asked if they would be filmed for a set-up shot for her upcoming TV show, through which she presumably hopes to recover some of the money.

But this week’s stand-up gigs, in a tiny hometown club, were hardly put on to raise cash.

Nor was there more than a passing reference to November’s election, about which she feels torn.

“It’s like choosing between being shot in the head or stabbed in the head,” she said, describing herself as a registered Republican.

After years of legal wrangling, and being torn apart by the American media, a set to her friends and fans felt like a way of moving on from politics.

As she wound down the night at well past midnight, a voice from the crowd called out: “What’s next?”

For the first time, Ms Daniels looked stumped. Reaching again for her glass, she laughed uncomfortably and raised it.

“Drink!”