Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Comedian known for her deadpan outrageousness and self-deprecating one-liners; formerly a psychiatric nurse.
On the island
Eight records
Variations on a Theme of Haydn
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado
I think the most wonderful kind of delicate piece of classical music I've ever heard. I'm a complete Philistine as far as classical music is concerned. I remember going to see this with a friend of mine, Mandy, who'd never been to a classical concert before, and this was on at the beginning, and we were both absolutely spellbound by it.
Oh England My LionheartFavourite
I love Kate Bush. I think she's a real kind of one-off. I assume that we have a similar childhood because I was brought up in Kent, in the Weald of Kent, in a little village. I had a pretty idyllic upbringing. And there's mentions in the song of apple orchards and carol singing and all that sort of thing, which really kind of resonates with me. Plus, there's recorders on it. And we were all tortured with recorders at school. And you thought they can't ever possibly sound great. And actually, they do in this song.
My parents actually had an album of his, very scratchy and actually full of kind of rather jolly songs, you know, like Lazy Bones and I'm Picking the Corn and all this sort of thing, but I didn't really like those very much. And there was this one record, Gloomy Sunday, and it's just really reminiscent of my childhood. I didn't like Sundays very much'cause I had to go to church. So I was slightly gloomy on Sunday, so it kind of fitted in well.
This is a song that I'm very fond of because I remember it from college. I was at Brunel University and Dear, Dear Uxbridge. This was a song we would sort of put on before we went out to get us in the mood. We used to tell it out really loud, like bounce on our beds, just go mental, and it's so joyful. It's great.
The lyrics in it just make me think about people that I met when I was a psychiatric nurse, because I think in South London, particularly where I was, if you did something about the sort of loneliness of a lot of people, that actually you would do away with probably half of the need for psychiatric treatment.
Waiting for the Great Leap Forward
My next record is Billy Bragg, who I think is the kind of perfect Englishman, really. There's a lot of sort of difficulty in this day and age for English people to say that they like being English because it always has kind of connotations of racism and little Englander-ishness and daily maleness. And I think Billy Bragg is spot on. I've always kind of admired his politics and he manages to achieve being English without sounding like he wants to send everyone back home, you know.
Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4
I love Elvis Costello to bits. I think his lyrics are so witty and cynical and intelligent. This particular song, I've got no idea why it's my favourite, it just is it's got some interesting images in it and it just kind of takes me back to a period kind of in the eighties and nineties when I was really having a good time.
It's the loveliest piece of music jazz-wise I think I've ever heard and when I met Bernie my husband he's a massive jazz fan and I always absolutely hated it and he's kind of shown me that actually I was listening to the wrong sort of jazz and this is really for him really to say he's a great bloke and thank you for making jazz palatable Bern.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:16What is going on inside when you appear so laconic and monotone on stage?
Well, a lot is going on inside really when that's appearing on the outside.'Cause that's um a device that I've always used because I think it's very important in stand-up, as it was when I was a psychiatric nurse to appear to be calm on the outside because that does something to the people that you're interacting with and I think it gives them confidence in you. So to me, kind of eighty percent of it is appearing to be confident.
Presenter asks
8:13When do you think fearlessness in comedy becomes tastelessness?
I think fearlessness becomes tastelessness a lot. It happens sometimes when you're under pressure. Because you are under pressure sometimes. You've maybe knocked out your best put-downs and it's still not working. And you feel a bit like a cornered animal sometimes. And you come out with something that you didn't really mean to say, but you just sort of felt desperate. And tastelessness is not judged as a general standard. It's judged by individuals.
Presenter asks
18:24Why did you choose psychiatric nursing?
Well, I think because um my dad had quite a serious um period of depression when I was a teenager and um y you know that really changed the atmosphere in our house quite a lot. And so I suppose it was something that I kind of felt I knew something about that I didn't feel frightened of or uncomfortable with and so I was pleased to to do it really.
The keepsakes
The book
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon
First of all, it's extremely long, so if I was there for a long time, I would at least have something to keep reading. And secondly, I think it would kind of enable me to have a decent conversation with Stephen Frye, because he knows about those things and I don't.
The luxury
Because over the last six months I've learnt how to play um the organ for a BBC series and I had to play it at the Albert Hall just before Christmas in front of about 8,000 people which is much harder than doing comedy. I was absolutely paralyzed with fear. But I've decided to learn it now so um I'd like to take it to the desert island and get better at it.
Presenter asks
25:23How difficult was it to form functional, straightforward relationships with men when you were labelled as a man-hater?
Well, it had absolutely no bearing whatsoever on having men as friends, because, you know, the the whole comedy circuit is all men... I just couldn't really kind of understand the way that I was being discussed because it didn't really reflect real life in any way whatsoever. And in terms of kind of chatting blokes up and kind of meeting sort of potential husbands, well, I think in a way it kind of cleared out the dross. And I only kind of got the ones that actually in any way thought I was all right.
Presenter asks
29:21How did becoming a mother for the first time at forty-four affect you initially?
Well, I absolutely loved it. It was very easy. You know, and most people obviously didn't even know I was pregnant'cause I'm so big, which is brilliant. I was a bit tired, but other than that, it was great and it was all a pleasurable experience.
“Ultimately the worst thing that can happen is that you're sort of humiliated by an audience. And I think actually when you think about it, most of us can cope with that, and particularly women can, because women, I think, suffer humiliation like that sometimes on a day-to-day basis when they're out and about, you know, because people feel that it's okay to kind of comment on women's appearance all the time.”
“I realized that as a woman performer, the more feminine you made yourself look, the worse it was for you, really, because people will then just assess you on the basis of your appearance more. So I just tried to look as neutral as I could with kind of like hideous baggy leggings and a black T-shirt”
“I think most celebrities have their kind of they have their sort of three adjective tag in the tabloids, don't they? Like w with me it was kind of fat, man-hating and feminist, you know. But you know, my self on stage is is i i is kind of a a minuscule part of what I am really.”