Hello, welcome to Sick Combe Geeks, I'm Dave Cohen. And I'm James Carey. And today we are delighted to have a very special guest who has, for merely getting on for four decades I would say, has been as a pinnacle of comedy as a writer and performer. She was in 1995, I think was the first woman to win the Périeé Award, and since then has worked continuously, successfully writing, performing and has gone into all sorts of areas, writing books, monologues, and I'm currently reading your latest book InHeritance, and so please everybody welcome a Jenny Eclair.
Well, I'm blessed to be here, Dave. I have to correct you though, unfortunately InHeritance isn't my latest book. InHeritance is my latest novel. I just bought out, Alton Weider, which is a survivor's guide to the menopause, which is in addition to my non-fiction canon.
But I'm not fast. Yeah. OK, well, you mentioned it. That's good.
No, I've got my plug in. Yeah, sorry. I'd say it's done a very good big up there. I hope your agent was getting all that.
You know, he's... And how are you getting on with InHeritance, Dave? Very well, thank you. It reminds me very much of, in the song of Rebecca.
Well, I'll take that. I'll have that one. That's what's happening to me. It's a bit like a...
When it isn't, I mean, it's set in Cornwall, which is, you know, does share that Rebecca background. I don't think it's got that much else in common, really. But I do love... I will take any similarities between me and definitely tomorrow.
I'll stick with this, because one of the ways... What I like about it is the way that the house, Kitty Wake, in Cornwall is sort of like a character. It is a character you have very much, though. It takes up as much space as any of the leading characters.
And that's how I always approach writing novels. It always starts with a house. I know we're veering away from sitcom already. Actually, we're not because...
Go on, no, go on. It is a situation. It is a situation. And that's why it is vital for me to know my house very, very well indeed.
And I've written five novels now. They all feature a house. And it's a bit like... I was playing my mother for this, because she didn't let me have a doll's house.
She always said to me, you can make your own. Here's a shimper box. Make your own. You know, typical Northern Army wife and a mother.
And so, you know, I've always had this fascination with the insights of people's houses and how people move around in their houses and who might be inside them. And I think that also stacks stems from living in Army barracks as a child. And everybody's houses... One time in my life, when I was about six or seven, you know, when we start going around to other people's houses, particularly?
No other houses were the same because they're all army. They're all army-baric houses. And what are they... You know, the toilet is...
Yeah, sometimes the other way round, they were like an army image, which is completely fucked me over. And they... Lots of them have the same regulation, but as well, you weren't allowed to leave any marks or anything. So people didn't really have that much stuff.
So when I've I've done the army, and I started going into the houses of people who, you know, worked from the military background, it blew my mind completely. It really didn't. Never since then I've had this slight obsession over interiors and how people live. And I'm much better at describing a sofa than I am a tree.
Oh. Well, I think the sense of places is really overlooked, especially within situation comedy. And I think, although, you know, you almost want the situation to have a life of its own. I'm just thinking of shows where the sense of places really strong.
I know it's a bit of a probably bad place to start. Open all hours, of course, has that corner shop that's incredibly evocative. And of course, you've got the till that's a character, you know, who is a center. It's the heart.
Well, yeah, you know, David Jason in that till. I've never watched a single episode of it, but I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, and the tin always falls off the top when it shuts back in. And we're just at center place.
Do you really think about that center place before you start writing anything, even the characters? I think that it's very important for me to be able to visualize even with quite small things or quite short things like the monologues I write for radio for. I do instantly get pictures of where they live and how they live and what sort of colors they might live with. Yes, it's all quite visual for me.
Right. That's because and there are plenty of all sitcoms where you talk about being able to describe a sofa better than a tree. I know a lot of people are against the idea of sofas in sitcoms, but you know friends is a sofa begins and ends with a sofa. Well, once upon a time, I mean, any sitcoms basically, you know, a sofa and a living room.
And I mean, I don't think you can take the sofa out of the sitcom because the royal family is another fine example. I mean, I'm not this, I'm going to come cleanly guys. I'm not a sitcom geek. I don't really watch sitcoms, but I do know.
I do know. I know. Great. Well, Jenny's latest book is available.
It's called Inheritance. The short-time book. No, no, no, I'm learning and I'm listening and I'm really interested because actually I probably know more about sitcoms than I give myself credit for. But as I said, the royal family, that was a fantastic example of the sofa containing a family and that being the base of where it came from.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, you've spent a lot of your life performing in front of audiences and making them laugh, which is, you know, kind of what audience sitcoms have been doing for 50 or 60 years. And what's in a sitcom as well? Sort of.
I don't think it was, it could be just behind the sitcom. It was a sort of semi, it was a hybrid. I don't remember it, Dave. It was kind of three.
I could not only just remember it, Jenny. I can remember the theme tune. Oh, that's weird. How did it go?
Well, it just started going back in a three. I don't know where these puppets, they made puppets of me, Frank and Henry Normal. They were like thunderbird puppets. It was a front stage.
Yeah, it was, it was, it was nearly successful, but it kind of misfired horribly. And the premise, again, you know, the situation was the Cropshall Palladium, which was, Henry Normal came up with. Henry, of course, was, he was miserably fired from it after the first series. And it was all his idea.
I mean, it really was disgraceful how people behaved. And of course he just fucked up and founded Baby Cow and made maps of fortune and made brilliant things and actually showed everybody a channel for that they made a bit of mistake, but there we go. So, yeah, it was, it was, it was the Cropshall Palladium and it was backstage and front stage, exactly as he just said. And I remember when I was a couple of years old, I was like, well, I've realized that I have real live guests and they range from being sort of stand ups to more specialists.
I remember there was a motorbike at once. That was quite ridiculous because he actually wrote his motorbike through the theatre on this really badly made sort of piece of track that some blokes had knocked up in the afternoon. He just thought, well, he could die. And yeah, it was, I remember the review, the first review I read of it in Time Out.
I was at a train station and literally the first episode had gone out and I picked up this review, started with the words, I've never gotten, and they just said, may God forgive everyone. That's not as good. May God forgive everyone involved in this text-sized turkey. Time Out were renowned for just being mean.
Yeah, and it's a sense of shame that went through me. I remember closing the copy of Time Out really quickly in case anybody sort of saw the review and recognized that I might be the girl in it because I was a girl then. And yeah, this absolutely, you know that thing where you just want to shed your own skin because you're far too embarrassed to be in it. Yeah, absolutely.
Of course, it was, it was quite dodging, but I think it had elements of something that could have been quite special. I was thinking about that show because obviously talking to you today, but I was thinking about it and the interesting thing that hadn't struck me at the time, but thinking now is that the three of you, you all began as poets, you and Frank and Henry. Henry, I don't remember Frank as a poet, but I mean, he was called, I think it was called Chris Collins or something before. No, he was, I think Chris Collins before.
When he was an alcoholic and all that. Well, the question wasn't an act. Chris Collins, I'm the gisp-poke. There's the funny jokes about being an alcoholic.
It wasn't an act. But I remember doing a couple of gigs with him when he was first starting out as Frank and he did songs and poems and things which I was kind of quite, and you know, they went by the way pretty quickly. And Henry's back doing poetry now. Henry's been doing stuff because he left me out and he's done a series of poems.
I think about his autistic son who's teaching. He's made a fantastic video show about it. No, it's great. He's spent more than 17 years at Baby Cow and had a fantastic time there and thought, well, maybe I can go out and do some gigs again.
I'm fantastic, really pleased to know he's doing that. Not now, because nobody's doing gigs now, so it's a fucking thing. I'm listening. I'm listening.
I'm listening. I'm listening. I'm just going to say poetry in some ways is a way that some people get started because it gives them a form and a structure and it's a bit like people doing something. It's like doing songs for people who can't sing or play a song.
It's like a song that's so deaf. I can say it's so deaf. But if I wasn't saying that, if I had to be in Debbie Harro. It's a terrible awful circumstance that's forcing me down stand-up roots because I literally account sing and I cannot follow choreography.
My choice is narrow. And also I'm in rubbish actress. I'm in web drama school. And I really did think that I was going to be an actress.
And I think if I had been born 30 maybe 50 years before, there'd have been a little sort of, there are some jobs, I watch old films, old black and white films. And I think that's my job, my role. Because there's always some sort of vaguely funny young girl carrying a tea train. It doesn't say much, but she tries to make the most of it.
And that was kind of going to be my destiny if I'd stuck to acting. But because of the way comedy evolves and history sort of coincides with these cultural shifts, I went to drama school in 1978 to 81. And this coincided of course with the birth really of alternative comedy. Are you there?
I know you were in Manchester, weren't you? You weren't there with Ben Elton or...? I wasn't at the university. I was such...
Honestly, I was such an inverted snob when I was a teenager. The idea of going to university, absolutely horrifying to me. I thought it was just for straits and twats. And I really, honestly, the kind of thing my old assistant did, you know, she went up and did English, it's an audition from Law at Kings.
And I wanted to leave school at 16. I wanted to do this, I wanted to do that. And my mum basically said, I wanted to go to drama school. My mum was very sensible.
She said, you know, you won't get a grant unless you get A levels. So I managed to scrape two A levels. I really was. I was so idle.
I didn't make any fucking effort whatsoever. I mean, I love art now. I paint more now than I did for my art A level. In a week.
I got a D&E. English in art. There was the only ones I cast. And with those two A levels, I managed to go to Manchester Protechnic School of Theatre, which was in an old cinema in Ditsbury in Manchester.
Yeah. What was it? Was it disorder? Well, I was going to say, getting into the stand-up, then, it feels like there were things that felt like they weren't going to work out for you.
But what is it about the stand-up form that you liked? Was it trying to make it work? Was it the persona? Was it the jokes?
Was it the intoxication of audience laughter? What was it? It was kind of an accident in some respects. I needed to get my equity card.
And I was sleeping with this bloke who, he was a bit of a mover and shaker, really. He'd been at, he was in third year when I was in the first year at drama school. And he was just kind of quite bossy, quite good at getting projects off the ground. And he formed this broad little alternative cabaret band called, Kathy LaCram and the one Barbus.
And Kathy was one of the original punk poets. And one of the girls of my drama school had gone out of John Cooper Clark. And as soon as I heard John Cooper Clark, I was completely convinced by it. I thought he was great.
And so, at first, the very first big idea, I did a poem of Kathy's. I thought, can't I just copy her stuff? I've got to do one of these on my own because one thing I'm not this achieved when it comes to performing. And using other people's material, even then, felt very, very wrong.
So I started writing my own stuff. And then of course, the band split up because everybody fell out with each other and, you know, everyone slept with the wrong person and still each other's drugs and all the usual stuff. And I ended up honoring a gig by myself, just no one else turned up. That thing when you sort of go to a gig and you expect some seat, your band mates there and they just weren't there.
And so I just did some poems by myself and I thought, well, you know, I'll take all the money for myself. I might, you know, my first ever gig that I did as a stand up. You were on the bill, actually. No.
Where? It was the Earth Exchange vegetarian restaurant. Oh, I love the Earth Exchange. Well, my kid.
Was it a local kid? Kim Wells. Yeah. He was a nice, far too nice restaurant.
You really believed in what he was doing. It's a tiny, tiny room, vegetarian restaurant. Most of the people there had gone to eat food and they even had been going for years. He'd suddenly, he'd sort of go for eight, thirty on the Monday evenings.
Right. Okay. We're doing a comedy show now. Yeah.
They liked it or not. People sort of eating their tofu sandwiches going off. They had a lot of mung beans, a lot of bean scraps and all that sort of thing. Yeah.
It was really hot. Do you remember the other one? The one that was really hot. They were all these places.
They were so tiny. We've basically spent ten years performing in armpits. There was one called Bungees. Do you remember Bungees?
Bungees very well, yeah. That's on Tim Panelli and it had been a photo, hadn't it? I think it was a popular in a place. It was a legendary.
It said, yeah. I'm actually reading David Mitchell's new book, Utopia Avenue. I think it meant... Not Our David Mitchell for the sitcom geeks listeners.
No, not that. Oh, it's like a picture. You know, I said at the beginning I wasn't really a fan of sitcoms. Really liked a picture.
But a picture was brilliant. Yeah, no. I think he might even mention Bungees in Utopia Avenue. But it's, yeah, that was...
Oh, there's a taste. We were so early on that there was quite a mix at that time. It wasn't just straight stand up, was it? In the early 80s.
It was... When did you come along? When did you jump on board? Well, this was early 1984.
The mill in this tiny, tiny room was the Joan Collins fan club. Oh, I'm doing it, Larry. We're doing it with Fanny the Wonderdog. Oh, yeah.
John Hegley and the Poptitions. So that's on his band. Yeah. And you.
And I was the tryout spot. Oh. Weirdly, I discovered years later, Maurice Grant, as in Marx and Grant, was in the audience. No.
How peculiar? I know. I met him sort of, got to know him about 20 years later. And he said, yeah, I remember I saw you.
And he mentioned that bill. And I obviously always remembered it because it was my first ever London gig. And he said, you know, I got up and Julian Clary made an idiot of me. Which, of course, Julian always...
Yeah, yeah. But with such grace. He used to do such grace. Like, you know, Julian is one of the most elegant performers, always was.
He did get people on stage in all that kind of thing. But I never felt bad for them. I was sort of, no, you're going to be all right. You're going to be...
Julian is going to look after you, really. It's not going to be horrible. It's not going to be humiliating. Yeah.
But the reason, I mean, one of the reasons I mentioned this, partly not just for a little trip down memory lane, but for the benefit of the listeners, a fact sheet and flayed eye grounds will be available in the show. It was actually to attest at the end, it was to quiz. But do you remember back then, there was quite sort of variety actually. Do you remember it was just stand up?
Well, John Glares was the home of, you know, all sorts of, I remember theatre, the complicity began their career. Yeah, they had high C-Ease, so you could have John, you could have Jetlars and you could have still... Well, it's called John Glares. I mean, presumably.
It's a variety show. Yeah. And it comes out of the musical tradition. You know, and so I think listeners who were listening, who would say under 35, maybe thinking, what are these people talking about?
I mean, I'm 44, so I can kind of remember, you know, a little bit of both. But actually, the way in which stand up is done now, I mean, the effect of someone like Eddie Isard, he just sort of shifted stand up in a particular direction. And now stand up, it just kind of bears no relation really to what was, you know, the variety stuff that you're talking about was, you know, was... I think it's coming back.
I think so. But it was coming back before we were so rude to interrupt it by Corona, because I got to Edinburgh most years. And that's all... When you go to Edinburgh, you do see a sort of huge variety of stuff.
And then spoken words come back a little bit more... Yeah, I think comedy is in good hands. It was in good hands. Everyone's doing all right.
And, you know, it's the saddest thing in the world. And I do feel, I feel appalling. Because you know that there are sort of... There's a handful of people, probably more than a handful of people, who will go to crack through to the big time this year, who's time to come.
You know, that's sort of juicy, sweet spot for a lot of comedians when, you know, their material is on point. They're experienced enough to really kind of show themselves off properly. And everything's all lined up and it's all ready to go. And it's just such a cruel thing to have happened.
Yeah. I think just to kind of get a quick update on that, actually, because, you know, it has been a desperate time. Some comedians have kind of risen to the occasion in some way. So also the government has said they're going to give some of the money from the hope to save theatre.
Yeah, it's a tough one. A little bit. Yeah. So we don't know who or how yet.
And the other sort of line is that, as we all know, those sort of dumb sound at grassroots level, it really doesn't take much to make a venue. You know, you can open... You know, as we were saying, you know, all those rooms above pubs, there will always be rooms above pubs. So we'll always be, you know, that community centre, you know, the church hall, all those spaces, you can put stand up on anywhere.
And if you end up with friends, just one thing, it is very much that any room can be turned into a venue. And we've all played them. And also, Edinburgh Fringe Talk Me is that... So my gigs have always been socially distanced.
People are not seeing it. Oh, no, no, no. We're going to go... Yeah, there's three people in that thing.
We're out. Yeah. I mean, I'm surprised that Edinburgh Fringe isn't just going ahead as normal, really. The only person who is going ahead with it is Arthur Smith is going ahead with his walking tours.
Yeah. I know, because we had about two or three meetings. I was going to be writing his Edinburgh show with him. But a new show?
Yeah. And then, you know, there was no show. Are you allowed to say what it's going to be about? Was he saving us up for the future?
No, because we just... Well, you're probably also for the future. But we basically met up a couple of times to talk about what sort of areas we thought might be interesting to do a show about. And that's as far as we got.
And then, you know, this was early March. I know, and we've all got all sorts of reams of material ready to be shaped and probably moulded and kind of shone up. And it's all just sitting there. I would like to mention Stephen Grant at this point.
Those of you who don't know, Stephen is the compare at Comedia in Brighton. And he's a very skilled sound up and compare as well. John, I like that. When I first met him, I mean, literally I was grown up and he looked about 12.
No, no, no. He still does. I remember meeting him there thinking, what? They're getting young every day of these comics.
But he was one of the first... He set up... He kind of basically set up his house as a sort of mini-comedia. He's got a set of a backdrop.
He got other comedians. He's got a few comedian shows on YouTube. You can subscribe to that. It's some great little shows he put on.
And he's now organising open-air shows in Brighton. In fact, he's just talking about some of the weird things you have to be careful of. Like, how near can the performer be to audience? Because when you're shouting, particularly...
No, you're speaking. Yeah. And, you know, what about the speakers? There's like a school playground 300 yards away.
Is there a chance that some of the... It's not my opinion. It's cold. No.
So, it's kind of new logistics. I think this is one of the reasons why I've always watched Shire doing outside gigs. So, I think I was still doing poetry. I must have been...
Jack, you know, Jack, my partner, who's in the house. No, he's still knocking about. And he gets picked me up. And it's gone all right.
But there's never easy to control an outside space. It just isn't. Especially when it's one of those... It was like a fake.
Not a school fait, a kind of community fait. I was the one person to ask. And Jack was waiting for me in the car. He just heard this disgusted bloke.
Stormy hours in his field. She said, chips over the toy. Oh, that's fantastic. But one of the things that I always thought...
I think what you could do from our generation of stand-ups, you could always say, are they a writer or are they a first or performer first? And he's a writer. I was always a writer who performed. Poor man and he's always a performer.
That person, writer, performer. You were always both. There were very few people who managed to be both. And I was wondering how, you know, which came first for you?
Definitely the performing first because I was a terrible show-off as a child. I mean, you know, terribly needy of attention. Classic middle child. And I did a lot of...
I mean, there were photographs of me and I recognized the expression I used to pull. I was a face-pulling, gunning, you know, attention-seeking, desperate wannabe. You know, I thought I was hilarious. I used to leave practical jokes and I used to wear my dad's army hat.
I'm, you know, afraid about with nothing else but an army hat on and all this kind of thing. And I was feeling that I was hilarious, very, very young, about three or four. I was really funny and knowing my sister wasn't. And then sort of, you know, I had this likely inflate with myself as a, you know, a very funny person.
And a popular person. And I sort of, you know, an entertainer. And then when I was older, when I was about maybe 11 or 12, I went around to a friend's house and I read her diary when she read to the toilet. And she had a list of all the friends in the front page of her diary and what she liked or didn't like about them.
And I was in this list and it just said, Jenny thinks she's more popular than she actually is. Wow. That's not their time out, isn't it? Look, isn't it for her to remember these things, these barbed comments?
It's probably for me. That's like an English show. Doesn't it? Jenny thinks she's more popular than she actually is.
I've got another review from three weeks of all the festivals for a play that had written called the anti-warhole syndrome that simply said, Jenny Clafix's play is clever than it is. I've got a review once I'm for a show that I wrote called a dog. Oh, no, it's a fact I've got it. Yeah, and it was a very, very famous reviewer came to see it, the one called Joyce McMillan from the Scotts.
I remember it, yeah, yeah. And she basically, in a sort of 1500 word article about the great shows on the fringe and everything I've seen, and it was sort of buried about three quasways. I saw a dog, which was a real dog of a show, and that was it. And then she went on to something else.
It's something that we bothered to give it 500 words. That's kind of a fucking thing. I mean, you've got to strike me up. At least 20 minutes right from the review.
The worst thing was I was also doing a show that year called The Cutting Edge Comedy Store Show, and this guy, John Connor, who was the producer. Oh, no, no, no. He was a critic. And I said, look what Joyce McMillan said about my show, a real dog of a show.
And rather than saying, oh, Dave, you poor thing, he said, oh, yeah, Joyce McMillan, I really like her. She's a fantastic critic. No, thanks, John. She just had to play a dog.
Yeah, sensitivity in the world of comedy sometimes can't be lacking, can't it? I mean, I think there's, the job with studying a lot of time with a lot of comics is you realize that they're on the scale of sort of social misfits. There's quite a lot of this art very much on that scale somewhere over. But going back to the writing while performing.
So definitely, before I could write, I was showing off. Then when I was able to write, I went to a segment of the Derby's in the Army. I went to this rather progressive school in Berlin. And they just, excuse me, I'm drinking dark coconut burping, disgusting.
Oh, did you hear that? I never burped. I was like, seriously, that's not the fifth burp. I've ever done my life.
I'm glad that's been captured on there. I really am. Right, yeah. It's such a rarity.
Okay, so I went to this funny school, this international school, and they just encouraged you to be really creative. And there was a lot of, it was sort of hippie, but not hippie morals or anything like that. It was just very creative. There's not lying around, drawing around each other and story writing.
They just encouraged you to write stories and illustrate them. I just love that. I really, really got off of it. And then we put my dad, he was a part-time spy.
And he took, he's dead now. That's another Edinburgh show right there. You just, you just know, one of the friends so many times. Your life is incredible, Jenny.
Well, it's not really. I mean, it was only part-time. Well, that's makes it more interesting, not less interesting. We had to leave Berlin quite rapidly.
We ended up in Bala Castle, and I went to this really, really quite rough school instead. I was staying to a camp on a parmy camp in Bala Castle. And there they didn't, you know, they weren't interested in writing stories or drawing pictures. It was all about maths.
You had to be able to do maths. And I'd never done sums. And I remember my first day there, we did a maths test, a times tables test. And I was about eight.
And now this kind of maths. I had no idea. And at the end of this test, you had to all sound on your chairs. Those were ten out of ten to put it down.
And those were nine out of ten. I got one out of ten. And I was the last girl standing. And there was a moment where I remember this quite clearly, where I couldn't decide whether I was getting off on being a really person left standing on a chair and everyone staring at me.
Or they're quite enjoyed that. Or whether it was the most hideous experience of my life. And I think quite a lot of my standard experiences have been that same mix of kind of knowing I'm failing, but still liking being the center of attention. That makes any sense.
Oh, makes a sense. Yeah, that's such a great moment, isn't it? Mm, sort of. And it does make sense.
And I don't want to kind of overstate the business about women in comedy. I'm sure you've been asked to talk about this lots of times. But I mean, there were, when I started out, there were, I don't know, three or four women doing comedy. I think we're not counting enough.
I've recognized that there were more than that. It's just that we never saw them on mass. When I think back, because there were also, there were kind of women that might not have been doing straight stand up, but were doing comedy in other ways, like Denise Black and the Crazy Sisters and Sensible Footwear. And people like that.
And they were, you know, they were singing their comedy songs, but they were still involved in what I call the Comedy Circuit. I think that I think we're missing a few of those names have just gotten lost in time. And I think that we recounted that we're probably about 20. I once had a little drinks party, my flat, for all the women in comedy.
I know there were at least 15 or 20, no dreamers around Linda Smith, Julie Blue. I mean, through the 80s, there were a brand school who, what happened, I think, was that the opportunities for moving this television were very important. And it seemed that once somebody got through that door from the circuit into Telly, that door got shut immediately. And that what that did was instill this sort of terrible competitiveness in me.
I don't think everyone got that. I think particularly for me, I was very, very jealous when other people were successful, because it was such an atmosphere. If it wasn't your turn, you might, if you didn't get through, you might never get through. It didn't seem very fair.
It didn't seem very shared out. And I also was very jealous when a new name came up. I remember the first time I saw Joe Grant, and it was at the tunnel, the tunnel park, which do you remember doing tunnel park, Joe? Very well.
I remember once hearing Harry Hill throwing up in the toilet before the went on stage. It's just been sheer nerves. It was on those things. I was at toilet in the corner.
And I could just say, no. Anyway, I was, I'd been on and sort of just got away with my skin, my teeth and my tongue, and she absolutely stormed it. And I remember this feeling of absolute sickness thinking, oh, oh, she's just leapfrogged over me. I've been doing this in years.
And she's just completely, she's just run by me. I've been overtaken. Well, that's kind of what I'm thinking about. The reason that I mentioned the winning thing, because I was thinking of Frank in particular, but also someone like Nick Cancock, for instance, who, you know, these are two great talented forms.
The number of chances that they got compared to, say, the number of chances that, for instance, Felix Dexter, who made an absolutely brilliant pilot, which didn't get aired, and that was it. And then you were talking about yourself, you got one shot. But I remember Nick famously did something I think was like 26 pilots before the sport. Holding the baby.
Yeah, I think that was a whole series. This is radio. We're talking about TV. No, no, TV is too loud.
He made loads and loads. And so there was this kind of sense that we know that Nick is great and he looks great on Telly. We're just going to keep going until we find the right vehicle. Whereas I felt at the time somebody like yourself maybe, but, you know, okay, well, she did pack it a three, which was a classic channel for early days of alternative comedy.
Well, hit on me, I think. They were kind of nobody knew what was going to work. So, you know, Vic Reeves came along and did his big night out show and that was, you know, there's no necessarily no reason why that was more successful. That was interesting as well though.
I remember doing a pub gig in South London with Vic and Bob and I'd been on first. It was okay, but it was non-committal, you know, and then a song Vic and Bob come on and the audience reaction to them was just went through the roof. And it was a zip. It was their private party and I'd sort of slightly gate crashed it and I was just not in the right, I wasn't in the right try.
And I remember watching that show with a feeling of absolute panic because I didn't understand why everybody was loving it so much. I don't think I was very young, I don't think I was very old, but I remember thinking, my stuff's all tacked. This is new stuff. This is what I'm going to do.
This is what the audience now want. And of course, what you realise in time is that there's all kinds of different comedy. But back then, they didn't seem, when you're still trying so hard to get yourself in niche, you feel that other people's success is automatically going to cancel yours out. Yeah.
That's the erosome game feeling, isn't it? It starts at every gig you always had because at the end of the gig, the compare would always read out the names of the acts. And you knew when you've done well in that app gig. And you know, you get, oh, and Dave Cohen, I don't know, you're clear.
You know, you just, you felt, you know, you took it personally. That's the ultimate 360 degree feedback that they talk about in management speak, isn't it? It's like, okay, that's pretty direct, isn't it? Yeah.
I've got a few questions here from some of our Patreon subscribers, just to sneak in. Is this so bad? No, no, no. I asked them earlier today on Facebook saying, we're talking to a wonderful Jenny Eclair, and lots of people said, oh, that's very exciting.
Ask her this. So Eleanor Haywood asks about, she said in another interview, you said, and she's quoting here, more attention should be given to female comics back in the, should have been given to more female comics back in the 80s and 90s, but opportunities to better now. And then she says, but as people get older, a male and female, are they ignored or overlooked? Do you think the comedy industry decision-makers open to new writers and you talent over 30, even over 40?
I've heard this, you know, that everyone's desperate for the new younger fresher without, and forget to pay some respect to people who've been kind of learning their craft. Yeah. My daughter's a playwright, and she's 31, and she went up something a couple years ago, and she was, somebody said something, and she said, well, you know, I'll be 30 next year. Seriously, some are said to keep very quiet about that, because you're lucky enough to look like you could get away from 26, just never mention it, which is, you know, she thought was ridiculous.
It's interesting, because you want to, what you really want is a mix. You, I mean, I think that very rightly, the Michaela Cole I made a story has been hit a lockdown in terms of drama, and it's great to have her new voice. I mean, there's a danger now that everybody will be looking for the new younger fresher, Michaela Cole, and you just want to sort of go, no, let, you know, let Michaela Cole grow. Don't let, don't just sort of harv his turn, take all her bones of blood and all things, and then sort of put her out to pasture.
You know, you've got sort of, I think that's, I mean, I don't have a great track record with television at all. I think that that's one of the reasons why I had to go away and say, I have more control if I write stuff, produce it, and get on with it. I mean, I've had some very odd, lucky breaks, which did come to me later in life. So this is going to cheer anybody up.
Really, my biggest television breakthrough came when I was about 44, and I was approached as long as Donald Trump Times in my career. I'm 44, carry on. Okay, well, it's yet to happen then. So I thought about, of course, saying, oh, Avalon here, and we've been approached as, I don't really be interested because the title of the show is Grumpy Old Women.
I just basically said about how much it was one of those talking head things, and the money was quite good. I thought, fuck it really, you know, doesn't mean matter, no deal, watch it. I think it was this real huge hit, and that wasn't a sitcom, and it wasn't a comedy drama. It was a talking head show, but it was put together with a great deal of skill by a female TV producer called Judith Holder, who I've since worked a lot with.
So she was a TV producer, and we had lunch together after the series had proved to be a bit of a hit. And I had my manager with me, and by the time I finished lunch, he was decided that we're going to write a live Grumpy Old Women show. So, you know, the opportunities can come from really odd angles. And that, you know, we've since written four separate Grumpy Old Women live shows, and toured all over with them.
We've been trustworthy, we've been to Iceland, and Finland, and all sorts of things with them. So, you know, just when you think, just when you think, oh, this is my darkest hour, sometimes a little bit like creeps in. Yeah, I mean, I talked to Milton the other day. Milton James, I write his radio show with him.
And he was saying that actually one of the things that he's most proud of is that he's just kept going. I totally agree. I feel like a Jack Russell sometimes, and just, you know, keep grabbing on the bottom of their pair of trousers. Yeah.
And those people who are sort of even further down the track, you know, those in there, you know, really long in the tooth comedians, they sort of seem to have a bit of a zen quality about them, which is there are some things in your control, which is basically what you do in sales stage, and there are some things that aren't, and you just sort of wait when the opportunity comes along, you make the most of it. Sometimes it will really help you, sometimes it sounds like a great idea, and it goes against you, and sometimes it doesn't come along. And if you don't want that, you're in the wrong game. Go for an insurance company, you know what I mean, just do something else.
And I think that's what always what comes across against, you know, the real elder statesman. I still think that some people have to look through the net. I just think that there's every generation of comedians, there are quite a number of names that deserved more, and didn't get it. I think just just to go back to Eleanor's question, and I think in terms of always looking for new and things, I think that all that's there is an instinct everywhere in any art form that people who are always looking, people see something successful they want to find a new or younger version of it.
I think there is also in comedy a sense that new doesn't necessarily mean young, and you can be 30 and 40 and 50 and not have done anything previously. I mean, sort of like Ricky's your face, for instance, was in his mid-30s before anyone knew who he was. So I think comedy is a sort of exception, thank God, where you can't be. But also for you Dave, there was a point recently where someone said, they're doing a TV show with horrible histories, do you fancy writing some songs?
And that was just like, if you'd packed it in and done something else. You've got to hang around with the opportunities, you've got to be there very much so. But I do think that it's radio, I mean, I think it's weird that there isn't a sort of, there's no competition for Radio 4, and it's so difficult for people to get their stuff onto Radio 4 because they just aren't enough socks. And it feels very much that there could be, instead of Radio 4 extra-wise and there Radio 4 extra extra, which is just for new comedy, new writing, new experimental stuff, but I don't run the world.
Which is a shame. I mean, the closest to that, and I've got a question about that in a moment, is Audible, I think I'm getting there. So I think Audible are trying to, when I was asking on top of Audible, they were saying, we're looking for stuff that isn't Radio 4 is at all. So, but it still...
I mean, I'm a huge fan of Audible because, and I've noticed very much over the last couple of years, I have a traditional dry eye syndrome, which means that my reading capacity is so difficult. I mean, I'm reading capacity has got to be limited because my eyes get very dry. And I have to read everything very big prints, which is annoying. So I've switched my leisure reading to Audible.
I've noticed in the last couple of years that things aren't being read straight anymore. You're getting fantastic productions. There's a book called Daisy Jones and the Six about fictional bands who are a bit like Fleet and Mac. And that's got a proper cast.
It's cast like a radio play. It's fabulous. And more and more are being done like that where there's equal emphasis on performance as the book itself. But the beauty of that is Radio is, I mean, hey, we're doing a podcast.
It's cheap. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I do a podcast, but yes, make a single penny out of me. Well, yes.
I feel like I've been led to an electric bike. Well, that's taxable. So you want to be very careful about that. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Oh, I'm sure they'll find a way somehow. One of the questions we had, which is radio related, is from another page on a guy, Jerry Payton, who asks about tips on writing monologues, suspiciously, not suspiciously, specifically, how to make them engaging, which is always difficult with the one voice. I'm thinking of little lifetime series that you did for Radio 4. Right.
I'm 30 of them, haven't you? No. There's six series. There's six series of either five or, I mean, some of them have been six, some of them have been four or five, whatever, but there are a lot.
There's also a book called Listening in with some extras that have never been recorded, that's sort of, you know, for publication only. Well, those are a weird one really, because I have no idea. I have no idea how I do any of my writing. I follow no rules.
There's like this sort of gut instinct that something's going to happen. And there's a small idea that is like a jelly, a form of jelly that starts to live to buy. So it's as if you've got some coloured water in a dish and then suddenly it starts to sort of take on form. And then, you know, before you know it, there's a character there.
I believe very much in the character person, the character, telling you dictating the story. I'm not good at plotting, actually. I wish I could because I've been asked to do workshops and teach writing things. And I always turn them down because I have no method of being up to share any tips or tricks with anybody.
I don't know how it happens. Well, I was thinking there with little lifetimes and you know, you get the most fantastic cast for those shows. So I'm thinking, do you know, Linda Robson, what's to do with one of these? Are you kind of seeing or Pauline Quirk?
No, I don't write them for the actualities. They're on their own. They chose that life. I write this character and then it's up to the producers to find an actress that can do it.
And then I would never have the nerve to sit down and go, oh, I think I'd like to write this for a meldastorontan because I would have no idea that meldastorontan would be three available or interested. So no, I write about a woman with sort of peculiar control issues and a thousand dimension. And it just turns out that meldastorontan was free to do it. Yeah, that's a beauty of radio is that you can get some absolute gem actors because they love the fact that there's no make up that you don't need to learn your lines and you just turn up, you do it and you go home.
It's on. You know what I mean? It's actually on. And doesn't really need any rehearsal.
I was just thinking that there's one actress Leslie, Leslie Mambo. Literally. Literally. She is a big team in it monologue and it took her 20 minutes.
She's more or less a bit in one take. I mean, I was due to the studio and I was held up for some reason, but the time got there. She got there. That's great.
Wow. I think I've got one more question. I think. Yeah, just going back to your standup stuff from Tom Peach who asked about whether he says that you've got one of the most distinctive and wonderful comedic voices.
And his question is how much of this is developed rather than natural and how did you go about developing the voice as it were just going going back to, you know, that's really interesting because I think I've done a bit of a full circle. I think what happened with me was that as a very young person, I knew I was funny. And then when I joined the comedy circuit, I thought it had to be a bit more than just funny and I wasn't quite naturally me or myself. So I developed a persona, this sort of Mike's was Jenny a character who said did a lot of stride around the stage with the cigarette and that kind of hard drinking hard talking hard swearing kind of thing.
And it did. It sort of did me not a good, but I had quite sort of sort of mental problems with it because I felt like two personalities about the stage Jenny and me Jenny. Unfortunately, what has managed to happen over the last 20 years, 15 years maybe is that those two characters have merged that the stage Jenny was allowed to become a lot softer with the Grand Plante Women shows. And eventually what emerged was that a much truer stage persona to myself.
I think I can answer that question as well because I remember when you went from being Jenny, the regular performer who was great and always did well at gigs and then you became, you kind of went off into the stratosphere. And I think it was the moment that you found out you were pregnant because your routine changed literally overnight and I remember not having seen you for about three months and you've been doing your normal stand up and poetry. And the next time I saw you, you were doing an entire routine about finding out that you were pregnant. And it was just like it was like, it was honestly not many women had done that at the time.
I was 28, it was 1988. The people was born in 1989. A lot of mileage out of her. I mean, they had a good job at it as well.
So, you know, it's good. It was good. All also. And yeah, but I think that was a life changing moment.
And it also sort of gave me a massive kick up the butt because I realized that there were two ways my career was going to go. I was either going to be a state her mother, but longer than I was going to be comfortable with or I was going to have to get this career of mine in some kind of shape so that I had some kind of, I was going to get back into it. And I had the baby and I remember being very frightened my first big back and drove me to this peak and we had the baby in the back. We had a fantastic car.
It was gold. It was gold. JAGMART 10. You don't see any of them anymore.
They're the biggest cars you can ever see. I remember that car. Yeah. It was fantastic.
And I gave the baby a feed and it was a club on the Kings Road. Someone off the Kings Road. It was like a nightclub. It was horrific, really.
I went and did no cake gig. But I remember sort of crying all the way there because I was scared. I was just saying, you'll thank me for this in the end. And I did.
And then I sort of, and then, you know, I pour off the baby. I got a nanny for her. But not a proper one. I mean, I didn't go through an agency or anything like that.
I just put a note up in the supermarket for a nice girl wanted to look after a baby. I didn't check in references or anything. It was very lucky really in some respects. So, yeah.
And then that's it. I started kicking three months after she was born and didn't really stop. Well, that's an unexpected answer to a question about developing your voice. Oh, but I forgot about that.
Yeah. So I think that I think the me that's on stage now is true to the real me that they're asking. Yeah. But again, you have time to be able to play with that.
And there are contours and it just sort of shifts with your career, with your own life situation, everything. And that's all fine. That's all part of it. And you get that by sticking around for a bit and doing stuff rather than just focusing on the under 20s and under 30s and their one voice.