Miranda Hart - The Biography. Sophie Johnson
at the comedy chart shelf, it went: John Bishop, Kevin Bridges, Lee Mack, Frankie Boyle, Michael McIntyre, Dara O’Briain, Rhod Gilbert, Bill Bailey, Jimmy Carr, Peter Kay, Dave Allen, Billy Connolly, Sean Lock, Stewart Francis, Lee Evans, Karl Pilkington, Rob Brydon…’
He was astonished that there is not one female present in the list, not even one token girl. Coren cannot fathom why this is. As I looked at hmv.com’s stand-up comedy DVDs section when writing the first edition of this book in 2011, only 18 of the 378 titles listed showcased female comedians. That’s not even 5 per cent. These included: four Victoria Wood DVDs; three French and Saunders’ live sketch shows (not really stand-up); Grumpy Old Women (stage show); and Pam Ayres (who, although funny, is primarily a poet). I considered including the two Lily Savage shows to bring it up to a nice round 20, but that would hardly be accurate. One year later, we’ve managed to push 4.76 per cent up to 5.39 per cent, with 24 appearances out of 445 DVDs. While this is a tiny improvement it shows that, despite the recent success of the likes of Sarah Millican, the truth is that women in comedy are heavily outnumbered.
It’s not much better on the live circuit. Performer Lucy Porter says, ‘Backstage at a gig, I occasionally realise that I’m the only woman in a dressing-room.’ This brings female comedians closer, as Miranda herself has confirmed: ‘I’ve made some really nice friends – mainly women. There’s definitely a sisterhood.’ There is a strange attitude that seems ingrained in our society that female comedians are separate. Sometimes, the compere gives them a discouraging introduction, whether through a simple mistake or brazen rudeness.
In his article, Giles Coren explains what happened to a female stand-up friend of his. She was appearing at a gig compered by Michael McIntyre, and pleaded with him before going on not to describe her as ‘gorgeous’: ‘Men always do that when they’re introducing me and it makes it very hard to perform – it means the women in the audience hate you before you even open your mouth, and the men are just sizing you up and going, “She’s not all that.”’ But, probably out of habit, he brought her on with: ‘This next act is the absolutely gorgeous… oops, she told me not to say that, but she is.’
In this case, McIntyre most likely said it by accident, but some male comperes are less innocent. Stand-up Tiffany Stevenson received the following patronising and rude introduction: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for another act. Now, it is a girl, so be nice because she could be a bit… well, crap.’
The comedy community has tried to overcome this by putting together gig nights with a female-only line-up (Miranda has, in the past, hosted such a gig called ‘Lipstick and Shopping’), or with an occasional ‘token male’. But this can have the opposite effect of highlighting the very issue they are trying to solve. Nina Conti has said that it made her ‘notice I was a female comic, rather than a male one’. Isy Suttie feels similarly: ‘For me, stand-up is my job and the thing about women-only gigs is that they become like a pat on the back and I don’t understand why people are patting my back.’
There was controversy in April 2011 when Funny Women, founded by Lynne Parker and which seeks to promote and develop new female comedy talent, announced that it would be charging a registration fee of £15 to those entering its annual competition. Comedians used Twitter as their soapbox and said what they thought of this ‘Pay-to-Play’ system. Sarah Millican offered: ‘Advice to any budding female comedians: no need to pay to play by entering Funny Women. Just be funny, write loads & work very hard.’
Bethany Black added: ‘If Lynne hasn’t been able to raise the money to cover the costs then that’s her failure. Why should comics who are at the start of their career pay for that failure?’
Shappi Khorsandi was equally dismissive: ‘Aspiring comics! Never pay to enter a competition! Buy a new hat instead!’
Funny Women’s website responded: ‘So, potential female comedians of the future, you have been presented with both a choice and an opportunity: you can either take comedian Shappi Khorsandi’s advice and do what’s expected of you as a girl (namely take your registration fee and go shopping for a new hat), jump on the bandwagon and perpetuate the stereotype of the bitchy irrational female comedian who’s more interested in gossip than developing a professional profile; or you can rise up and act with the strength and poise of a woman, join us in making a statement, and be a fundamental part of taking female comedy beyond this silliness and on the next level.’
This only inflamed the situation, and comics joined a Facebook group to boycott the competition. Jo Caulfield, whose picture was used by Funny Women in its publicity material to justify the fee, said: ‘As the website face of Funny Women Pay2Play I advise all new young female comics to AVOID us like the plague.’
The next day, the blog post was deleted from the website, and replaced with an apology from Funny Women’s head, Lynne Parker. ‘I would like to apologise for yesterday’s blog post. I was so shocked at the responses to the introduction of the £15 registration fee and have been hugely hurt by what’s being said on Twitter and Facebook.’ To try to make amends, she continued, ‘I am a great personal fan of some of my worst critics and just so sorry that this has all been taken out of context. I really hope that we can all get past this and move on.’
When the 2012 competition was launched, Funny Women prompted a debate after choosing to keep the £15 entrance fee, even though they had secured sponsorship from the cosmetics company Benefit. It also has a variety award which honours character, speciality or sketch acts, which is sponsored by Blue Nun wine.
Female acts can find a similar fight on television, where panel shows dominate the comedy listings. Suzanne Moore, columnist for the Mail on Sunday and the Guardian, is critical of such formats. ‘Every so often, someone like Miranda Hart or Josie Long comes along and reminds us that yes, women can be hilarious too, but panel show after panel show now consists of what we used to call DOTs (Dicks on Tables).’ It’s a rare panel show that features as many female guests as male ones – but the playful We Need Answers on BBC Four (on which both Hart and Long appeared) was one, and a world away from DOTs.
Rising star Holly Walsh defends the panel-show format. ‘I really enjoy doing panel shows. I love writing jokes and I love the fact that you can’t rely on your old material – you have to come up with new stuff.’ She also points out that they are a good way of showcasing new comedians, as stand-up shows tend to only use ‘tried and tested people’.
Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch, had stirred up the debate in 2009 when she said on television that women weren’t as funny as men. To try to stop the furious response, she published a piece in the Guardian beginning, ‘I should probably not have said, in so few words on television recently, that women aren’t as funny as men. Put so baldly, the observation sounds like deliberate provocation, as if I was baiting feminists, or looking for some kind of knee-jerk response.’
Her explanation, however, did not placate those who disapproved. As one blogger remarked, ‘Germaine Greer regrets saying, “women aren’t as funny as men” in so few words – so she says it in many, many more words.’
In the article, she makes further provocative statements such as ‘they have not developed the arts of fooling, clowning, badinage, repartee, burlesque and innuendo’; ‘Women famously cannot learn jokes. If they try, they invariably bugger up the punchline’; ‘Put her in an improvised situation along with male comedians, and she is likely to be left speechless’; and ‘Men do the inspired lunacy; women do droll.’
Tiffany Stevenson, who runs a gig with Zoe Lyons called Girls with Guns, was left feeling frustrated by Greer’s article. ‘The window of opportunity is already narrower for women on stage, as audiences and promoters come with prejudged notions about a woman’s ability to be funny. Germaine Greer simply perpetuates the myth that we’re not.’
Britain has a rich history of female comedians, so it is hard to understand why this entrenched attitude has not shifted that radically over the years. Miranda Hart says, ‘As a female viewer, I’ve never felt like I needed women on the telly but actually maybe one does. Without French and Saunders or Joyce Grenfell, I wouldn’t