Comments | libellum: Women in comedy

libellum

Women in comedy

Nov 13, 2011 21:49

Zoe Margolis has just posted a crowd-sourced list of female UK comedians, by way of highlighting the gender imbalance within comedy, especially on panel chatshows. I've heard of nine of the women on the list. I don't do to the Edinburgh fringe and I'm not a comedy buff, so unless I've seen them on TV or YouTube, I'm missing out ( Read more... )

Comments 6

fluffymark November 13 2011, 23:32:25 UTC

I am good friends with Helen Arney! She *does* have a few sciency based songs in her repertoire, however, as you have noticed, she has a much larger pool of songs about dating disasters and morbid romances. And music is rather ... minimal, but it does the work when it is needed. She's good, but not perfect, but getting better, and as you say, she can improvise and banter to patch over any flaws, so somehow it all works out ok.

libellum November 14 2011, 23:15:04 UTC

Oh cool! We're going to see them tomorrow night in fact. I love FotSN so much more because she's in it, and I'm sure her repertoire is broader than what I've seen in the one show I've been to so far. We saw them at the Underglobe and it was a bit, like, the boys talk about science and then Helen pops up and does a song about romance. I hope she gets to talk about science more normally! I think she'd be really good at it - she was great in the talky bits that she did do, she just didn't present any of the experiments or educational bits and I thought that was a shame.

vampire_kitten November 14 2011, 10:57:23 UTC

Have you tried listening to the News Quiz on BBC radio? It tends to have a better gender balance on average, helped by the fact it is presented by sandy toksfig so on occasion it has *gasp* MORE women than men. And on a couple of glorious occasions more lesbians than men.

libellum November 14 2011, 23:16:53 UTC

No I haven't! Thanks for the recommendation, will definitely follow that up :)

smhwpf November 14 2011, 20:31:35 UTC

I've seen a few of the women on that list, mostly (entirely?) at Edinburgh ( ... )

libellum November 14 2011, 23:24:37 UTC

Awesome recommendations, thankyou. Will definitely put the time into some googling and seeing what I can find in the way of Youtube videos/local gigs etc.

Clearly I need to do the Edinburgh Fringe at some point!