During lockdown you quickly built up a following with your TikTok and Instagram characters such as middle class mum, hell's receptionist and supervillains' gay assistant, but you don't do them in this show do you?
No, I don’t - but the stand-up has the same sort of tone and vibe. Sinister meets boujie? Something like that. So hopefully if people find the sketches funny, they will like the show.
Do you think you might do your characters onstage in the future?
I might! But I really love stand-up, and the stage feels like the place where I can do that, whilst mincing around in my kitchen in front of a greenscreen feels like the perfect outlet for the character comedy. It’s nice to be able to do both.
I'll always do live performance. I love looking at the careers of people like Alan Carr, where no matter what they've done and the heights they've reached, there's always a tour every few years. I think there's something about the live aspect that you don't get from anything else. But while I certainly think of myself as a live performer, there's also something really nice about sketch - it’s very meritocratic. You can pop something online, without anyone else’s say-so, and if other people think it's funny then it will do well.
Are you from a showbiz family?
No, not at all - though everyone in my family is funny. My parents are retired now, but my mum was an occupational therapist and my dad is a doctor of aquatic biology who worked in the petcare industry. So more of a science household, but comedy was always around. We’d go on family holidays to Devon or Yorkshire and laugh along to cassettes of Billy Connolly or Jasper Carrott. They were thrilled when I said I wanted to be a comedian.
What were your earliest ambitions?
Oh, well I was a very ambitious child. I think at my earliest I wanted to be an author and sorcerer. But growing up in Hampshire, in what I couldn’t even call a village - just like, a collection of fields with a bus stop - I dreamed of moving to the metropolis. I had delusions that I would move to London and become the new Oscar Wilde, and that would be that. Then I went to University where everyone also apparently thought they would be that, so I said “okay, well then I shall be a very sultry and impressive jazz singer”. …And, finally, when I kept writing jokes instead of profound lyrics, I realised I’d just have to be a comedian instead.
Who are your comedy favourites?
I mentioned Alan Carr - I also love Tom Allen and Mae Martin, and I went through a real phase of just bingeing through Simon Amstell's stuff. I love that gossipy fun of Alan, and the ‘your-best-friend-telling-you-a-story’ vibe of Mae.
In the show you mention your boyfriend, who is a wrestler...
Yes - my house consists of me, a dog, and a professional wrestler from Grimsby. I thought I would enjoy watching him perform live, but frankly, I can’t look. It’s deathmatch wrestling, which means barbed wire, broken glass, real blood, and jumping from great heights. There's a video online of him dropping from a second floor balcony onto a concrete floor. I’m somewhere in the crowd watching and thinking 'am I about to become a full-time carer?'
You talk in the show about being bullied at school. Is your success a way of having your revenge on the bullies?
Oh absolutely revenge. I was a very camp kid in my own way, but had it bullied out of me. I spent most of my late teens and early twenties pretending to be someone I wasn’t - lowering my voice and wearing deliberately bland clothing. I have a recording of me doing stand-up at university where I'm speaking in a monotone, wearing a plain shirt and brogues. I watch that now and think “who are you?”. Over the last few years I've been on a mission to rediscover that flamboyant 13 year old and own my inner villain. Gardeners talk about re-wilding - I'm re-camping.
