Angela Barnes is back on the road with her new show Angst. The quickfire stand-up has appeared on numerous TV shows including Live at the Apollo, Have I Got News For You and as a regular panellist on Mock The Week.
In Angst the former nurse gets personal, finding the funny side of her worries. In this new interview below she talks about the joys of touring, why scientists are studying her brain and why she won't be doing any shoplifting in the forseeable future.
Click here for tour dates.
Your new tour is called Angst and explores your anxieties...
Nobody wants to watch a comedian and hear about how brilliant their life is. Where's the fun in that? I want my audience to come to my show and go away and think 'well at least I'm not her' and then they feel better about their own lives!
It's a title I think a lot of people will relate to.
I originally wanted to call it 'Torschlusspanik', a German word that means 'panic of the closing gate' – that sort of 'oh my god I'm nearly 50 and there's all this stuff that I've forgotten to do with my life'. But then I thought I'd better call it something more accessible. I think angst is a pretty prevalent feeling in the world at the moment.
How bad does your angst get?
I've got a low level hum of anxiety that's there all the time but also more existential stuff like thinking I'm nearly fifty and I've never shoplifted or sexted. Not that I'd ever shoplift. I'd be terrified of getting caught and I don't like being told off. I'm a people pleaser.
Have you finished writing it yet?
I did a work in progress run in Edinburgh in summer 2024 and as it's not a topical show I don't need to rewrite it. When I did my last tour there were so many PMs I had to keep changing it.
You are best known for your topical humour on Mock The Week but this show sounds like it is more about you than politics...
This is probably my most personal show as it's about me rather than the world as a whole. I've tried to steer away from politics because it's so bleak. I think a lot of us are feeling that we should take care of our own little patch as it's all we can control.
In what way is Angst personal?
I've previously done shows that have been emotional so they've been personal in a different way. This is personal in a more introspective way. It's full of jokes, that's the most important thing, but it's dissecting my own psyche. As you get older there's a realisation that there's not this magical day in the future where it all just slots into place. You've got to learn to live with that rather than just work towards a day that doesn't exist. I won't be an old person with wisdom because I wasn't a young person with common sense, it's a bit like you can only get shingles if you had chickenpox.
This tour is also a landmark for you - ten years since your first solo show.
I've done everything quite late in my life. I started stand up late and didn't get married until I was in my forties. I'm 48 but young comics look at me like I'm the old guy now even though I feel like I've only been doing it for five minutes.
You talk about your synesthesia in Angst. Please explain...
Synesthesia is a sort of mixing up of the senses, so for me abstract concepts have colours. I'm part of a study at Sussex University into a new form of synesthesia that they've identified so I talk about that how my thoughts live in physical locations. Usually places from my childhood. For example if I'm thinking about classical music those thoughts live on a windowsill in a classroom in my primary school. They are calling it 'location memory'. Maybe one day I'll be a phenomenon.
Does this condition affect your humour?
I get dark thoughts. What seems to be common with people with synesthesia is high anxiety because you've got extra brain activity and that means your thoughts have to get more extreme for you to pay attention to them. So even when something good is happening your brain will explore ways that it's going to go wrong. Like when I married my husband Matt I said to him that I would love him forever even though statistically he's the person most likely to murder me. Your brain will find the darkness in anything if you let it.
Has the inspiration for your jokes changed since Mock The Week finished?
I didn't set out to be a political comic so since Mock the Week was cancelled my news consumption has reduced dramatically. Doing topical shows like Radio 4's The News Quiz or Mock the Week you had to write jokes about the news so you had to be across it. Mark Steel and Jeremy Hardy were able to be angry in a funny way, but I never quite mastered that. So when Mock the Week ended I made a conscious decision to move away from that type of comedy.
How does doing Have I Got News for You compare to Mock The Week?
I really enjoyed that. Mock the Week was seven comedians all vying to get their opinions in. I thrived on the intensity of that but on HIGNFY it was more like doing a podcast recording. I was nervous because you don't know what to expect, but it was actually quite a fun, relaxing experience – if doing TV can ever be fun and relaxing.
What are your ambitions?
I've got no desire to be a megastar. I've got friends who fill arenas that and they're not able to walk down the street. I love the craft of writing jokes and I love the stuff that I get to do because of it. I'm quite happy with my level of fame, where if people recognise me they often think they've worked with me. I had one woman once drunkenly at a Pulp gig absolutely insist that I worked with her at East Midlands NHS.
Did you know there's an American film director called Angela Barnes?
Yes, and there's also one who plays French horn in the London Symphony Orchestra. The reason I know that is because several times she was paid for my appearances on The News Quiz. She found me on Twitter to tell me and she lives very close to me so we became friends.
Do you enjoy touring?
All the TV and radio and stuff I do is to get bums on seats for the tour. The dream for a live comic is to play to an audience that has bought a ticket to see you because they like what you do already. I hope I never stop being grateful for people that have bought tickets to come and see me because it just it blows my mind. I love being on the road. It's the nearest I'll ever get to being in a rock band.
Picture by Matt Crockett
