Backwards In High Heels

Comedy Lockjaw Thanks To Gina Yashere!

My jaw aches today but for good reason – last night I laughed so hard my jaw went into spasm!

I went to see Gina Yashere perform in Nottingham and it really was a rip roaring gig. The venue was the Lakeside at the University which I’ve never visited before and was very impressed by. They have built a beautiful complex and the theatre last night had a capacity crowd of 250. Intimate and very well laid out, it was a really comfortable place.

Gina was at immediate ease with the crowd and literally straight among them, eyeing out her ‘victims’ for the night! She got amazing value out of ‘Professor Richard’ who was like a (well educated) rabbit caught in the headlights!

The show lasted just over two hours with an interval halfway, and I was agog with admiration as she never missed a beat. The crowd, which was made up of every age group, really were in her hand and I think the intimacy of the theatre really concentrated that atmosphere. All through there was no sense that we were the audience and she was the act, it felt more like a get together and that is incredibly hard to engineer.

Gina's very graphic description of a recent trip for colonic irrigation conjured up some scary images – talk about ‘don’t try this at home’! She has chav impressions down to a fine art but what really tickled me was a very sweet older couple in front of me. When Gina mentioned chavs the gentleman, easily in his sixties, looked a bit perplexed and his wife leaned in and said ‘chavs are rather uncouth members of the working class, dear’!!

I’m not going to tell you about the act because my top tip is go see her yourself, but prepare for belly laughs leading to wee leakage! Her style is really comfortable and she hits on some really serious social issues but never with that fear of ‘oh no the comedian’s got us here under false pretences and know they are going to go serious on us’. It’s laughs all the way thanks to some beautifully prepared observational comedy and enviable ad lib ability.

She’s added some dates to her tour, check our her website for details and catch her if you can.

Is Gina funny? I do think so!

Gina+Yashere, comedy, stand+up

Linda Smith

Linda Smith is one of my heroines and a huge inspiration.  She had a wonderful dry, observational wit and an amazing talent for writing. Her Radio 4 comedy 'A Brief History of Timewasting' is one of my all time favourite listens, I never tire of it. Her wit was kind. She didn't need to belittle others or herself, she was too busy observing the truth under our noses such as Argos is home shopping with a walk and curling is housework on ice.

We were robbed in February when Linda passed away after a battle with cancer, but thank goodness we had her in the first place.

Click here to listen to Radio 4's tribute to Linda which aired today (Wednesday 9th August) and I believe will be available on 'listen again' for the next week.

Tech Tags: Linda+Smith

My Name Is Beki not Earl

I like Fridays. My day is spent working hard (please, please buy that and don't ask for proof) whilst being entertained via listen again at BBC7 and Radio 4. Yesterday it was One Foot In the Grave followed by a run of Baldi's I had been saving up for a big hit.

Friday night is one of the few nights I watch TV lately with most channels trying to tempt me in with comedy.  I do time my sitting down to correspond with the end of My Family. I am a rubbish critic due to my Pollyanna Gene in which I try to find something good in everything.  My Family could prove a miracle cure for Pollyanna-ism.  I find it the most puerile, ham-fisted, in fact just plain ham, load of tosh.

Green Wing on Channel 4 has slowly but surely won me round. Some of it is remarkably vulgar and pointless. These tend to be the bits I laugh at. And yes Mum I concur, the character of Mac does look like he should be Ginger Baker's lovechild. Perhaps a future plot twist?

Straight after Green Wing it is My Name Is Earl. Please slow the bandwagon down, I want to jump on. It doesn't have the pace or the canned laughter we've come to expect from mainstream American comedies and is all the better for it. I love its gentle humour. I love its sentimental streak. I don't want all the humour I see to be aggressive and sarcastic, so there.

Also, I have always strongly believed in, or feared, Karma. I was brought up with the notion of 'what goes around, comes around'

I suppose that means all those snide remarks I've ever made about My Family are going to come and bite me on the bum one day. Bugger.