Are female British comedy performers funnier and more original than men?

Candy Gigi – Are men doing this sort of comedy act in Britain?

This is a story of two female performers who, on stage, are utterly different. One comes across as an English rose; the other can possibly be best described as a live-action version of Warner Bros cartoon character the Tasmanian Devil.

A few months back Martin Soan, who runs the Pull The Other One comedy club with his wife Vivienne, told me he felt a lot of the best up-and-coming comedians – especially the weirder acts – were women. Martin knows a lot about new talent and it is maybe worth pointing out that Pull The Other One is currently compered by funny woman Lindsay Sharman while Vivienne Soan is setting up a new Pull The Other One club in Germany.

As any regular readers of this blog in the last year will have spotted, I think phenomenally highly of former BBC Broadcast Journalist turned comedy performer Juliette Burton. She is not a comedian in the traditional sense – certainly not a gag-spouting stand-up comic, but she is a genuinely great creator and performer of full-length shows.

Her When I Grow Up show at this Year’s Edinburgh Fringe (which I saw four times, just to be sure it really was as good as I thought it was and not just a one-off freak) was masterfully (there is no non-male word) researched, crafted and performed, had unexpected intellectual depth and vigour and I shed a tear at each performance, despite knowing what the emotional twist to the seemingly lighthearted show was.

I am not normally a fan of – in fact, I usually actively hate – video inserts in live shows. But Juliette spent the year in the lead-up to the Fringe shooting interviews and video inserts which to my constant surprise fitted perfectly into the live show with live voice-overs and links by her. She also (there is no non-male word) marketed her balls off in the lead up to and during the Fringe.

There were video clips on YouTube and a pop song called Dreamers which she performed at T in The Park immediately before the Fringe

and which was accompanied by a pop video posted on YouTube.

All profits from sales of Juliette’s Dreamers song from iTunes and elsewhere will go to the BBC’s Children in Need. until 15th November, the BBC’s transmission day.

In Edinburgh, there were also QR codes on flyers linking to the Dreamers music video promoting her When I Grow Up show; she arranged a flash mob in the Royal Mile; and much more.

There was something else she did at the Fringe which she reminded me about yesterday. She is auctioning off a book.

“It starts today,” she told me yesterday, “and you can bid to become the proud owner of the When I Grow Up Dreambook.

“It’s a book I ran around the Edinburgh Fringe with. I asked lots of famous and soon-to-be famous Fringe performers to write in the book what they wanted to be when they were children and what they do now.”

“So who has written in it?” I asked.

“Ooh,” said Juliette, “loads,: Barry Humphries, Phil Jupitus, Frank Skinner, Robin Ince, Marcus Brigstocke, Stewart Lee, Andrew Maxwell and loads more including Gary Morecambe the son of Eric Morecambe and Brian Henson the son of Muppets creator Jim Henson. And John Fleming of the Malcolm Hardee Awards and the John Fleming blog.”

“Only the crème de la crème, then,” I said. “Was Brian Henson green?”

“He picked a green page to write on,” replied Juliette.

“Barry Humphries is an interesting man to meet,” I mused.

“I remember him being very well dressed,” said Juliette. “Patrick Monaham wrote in the book twice.”

“Did he hug you?” I asked.

“Twice,” said Juliette.

“He may have been thinking of something other than Children in Need,” I suggested.

“We even did a little video of it,” said Juliette.

“The hugs?”

“Me getting people to sign the book. You are at 3 minutes 30 seconds into it.”

“So it’s worth watching the first three minutes, then,” I suggested.

“People can bid to own the item and all of the money received is going to the BBC’s Children In Need appeal,” Juliette said.

“Why Children In Need?” I asked.

“With the show being about childhood dreams,” replied Juliette, “it seemed appropriate, fun and lovely to see if dreamers achieved their dreams.”

“How long is the auction?”

“It closes on 15th November – next Friday – the day Children In Need is transmitted. The auction is on eBay.”

“And,” I said, “as a result of your Fringe show, you have been offered four or five interesting projects.”

“Nothing signed yet,” said Juliette, “so we can’t talk about them.”

“Australia?” I asked.

“I can talk about that,” said Juliette. “A company are touring me in Australia for three months. They’re taking me there in February to perform When I Grow Up at the Adelaide Fringe sometimes twice, sometimes once a day and I’ll also be performing with Lizzy Mace in our Rom Com Con show which was at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2012. After that, I’ll either be doing the Melbourne Comedy Festival or touring around. The itinerary is to be sorted out.”

“And, when you come back to the UK at the beginning of May,” I said, “you have deals with a couple of British media companies.”

“Agreed but not signed yet,” said Juliette, “so we can’t talk about those. But I’ll be back in time to do a show at the Brighton Fringe.”

“Will your show at the Edinburgh Fringe next year involve making videos in advance?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Juliette. “It will involve interviewing people on video and I definitely need people to get in touch with me if they want to go on record talking about their appearance and their relationship with how they look.”

Phil Kay performed with a bakery product last night

After seeing Juliette yesterday afternoon, I went to see one of the monthly Goodfather comedy nights run by Thomas Ward and Phil Kay at the Comedy Pub, a short heckler’s cry from the London Comedy Store in Oxendon Street – although heckling Phil Kay is not something to be recommended.

Thomas encouraged me to review the evening, but I rarely blog straight reviews. Instead, I will mention the aforementioned Tasmanian Devil comic – Candy Gigi, whom I mentioned last week.

Any show compered by Phil Kay is bound to be interesting and have stand-up acts worth seeing. But Candy Gigi is virtually unreviewable except visually. Some people might (I guess) not like her act, but it would be difficult to actively DISlike it because you would be suffering from sensory overload and unable to think clearly. I was sitting at the back of the audience so I could not see faces, but I had a feeling some may have mirrored the open-mouthed facial reactions of the First Night audience at Springtime For Hitler in Mel Brooks’ film The Producers. A combination of disbelief and sensory overload shock is not necessarily a bad thing in comedy.

In my very erstwhile role as a finder of bizarre talent for TV shows, I would sometimes see acts which were wonderful live but which would never translate to two-dimensional TV screens. I always went for talent, energy and originality. Go for the performer who has that ‘X’ Factor (in the pre-Simon Cowell sense.)

Candy Gigi has it, though how she develops this eye-popping and ear-assaulting act I have no idea. All I know is that the only way to describe it is to see it.

If there were any justice in the comedy and entertainment world, then both Juliette Burton and Candy Gigi – two utterly different acts – would become rich, successful and famous, not necessarily in that order.

There is not.

So I can but toss a coin and pray, hope and mention.

Juliette Burton on what it’s like to sing at Scotland’s T in The Park rock festival

(A version of this piece was also published on the Indian news site WSN)

Comedy performer turned rock chick Juliette

The annual T in The Park is Scotland’s equivalent of the Glastonbury music festival.

This year, the acts included Snoop Dogg, Paloma Faith, Killers, Mumford & Sons, The Proclaimers, Dizzee Rascal, Stereophonics, Travis and comedy performer Juliette Burton, who is staging a show at the Edinburgh Fringe titled When I Grow Up.

In it, she recounts how, this year, she tried to be all the things she dreamt of being when she was a child – including a baker, an artist, a Muppet and a pop star.

Performing yesterday at T in The Park was her “research” for being a rock star. She sang one song – Dreamers (When I Grow Up) – which is on sale for charity now and online as a music video later this week.

“What was it like yesterday?” I asked her.

“Unusually,” she told me, “there was no rain. But it got so dusty I am still sneezing dried mud out of my nose. I thought I had got a tan but when I had a shower this morning I realised it was just dust.”

“I’ve been to Glastonbury a few times,” I said, “but never to T in The Park. It’s much the same I imagine?”

Juliette about to go on stage

“Well,” said Juliette, “there were the obligatory sightings of men and women peeing in public. That was expected. But there was an unusual fashion I hadn’t realised existed where young women wear hot pants cut so high that their bottoms hang out. I played ‘spot the arse’ which was a fun game. Sometimes it wasn’t bare cheeks I spotted but arses of a different kind – young men. I learned a lot about how to spot people on different types of recreational drugs.

“Then there were the tanked-up teens who decided to play volleyball in the middle of the crowd dressed as Monty Python-esque characters. There were some other excellent costumes around: the panto horse, the superheroes, the men dressed as bananas and a guy with a hoodie that just said CUNT on it. I was not sure whether he was advertising it or wanted to find some or he just wanted to let people know he was one.”

“So it was a different audience to the normal comedy show audience you’re used to?” I asked.

“Yes,” agreed Juliette. “Normally my audience keep their shirts on. There are usually far fewer nipples on display at a comedy show.”

“Were you more nervous?” I asked.

“I was trying to cope with the nerves by not thinking about it until it happened,” replied Juliette. “Which is a great coping strategy… until it happens. Before going on stage I was more of a bundle of nerves than I’ve been in a long while. I felt physically sick. I was worried I’d not be able to pogo in the shoes I’d chosen, worried I’d forget the words and worried about being bottled by the crowd.”

“So it was much scarier?” I asked.

Juliette on screen and (tiny on the right) on stage yesterday

“Terrifying,” said Juliette. “My comedy isn’t stand-up exactly – and stand-up is terrifying for much the same reason as T in the Park was terrifying – the crowd. But a comedy crowd – especially during the Edinburgh Fringe – comes to see a show because they love comedy. They want to watch a show you’ve put your heart and soul into creating.

“The crowd at yesterday’s T in the Park gig was not there to appreciate the fact I wrote a pop song to realise my childhood dream of being a pop star. They were there for the beer. They were mainly men, already pissed and enjoying themselves.

“I’ve never taken drugs – because I’ve already had a psychosis and nowadays I like to get my highs from laughter. So some of the young men may have also been on something else. It was a music a music festival after all. I don’t know about that. But I do know they were loud and a little aggressive. And they just wanted more beer.

“Even the compere of the show said they were the toughest crowd they’d ever had and the crowd was terrifying because they weren’t listening. So seeing that crowd before I went on was absolutely the scariest thing. I mean, what if they bottled me? Or chucked pints of pee at me?”

“So how did it go?” I asked.

Juliette had to fend off marriage proposals from front row

“Actually,” said Juliette, “it was frickin’ awesome. I owe a lot of that to the amazing comperes – Ben and Rufus. They introduced me in a way that meant the crowd (even that crowd) would warm to me – We want you to go crazy for this lady. Imagine she’s Rhianna and Beyoncé’s love child! – and they said they’d give free beer to my biggest fans…

“So, with that sort of introduction and bribery, I was lucky. Some of those guys, though, took the biggest fan thing really seriously. I got proposed to mid-song by two of the guys in the front row.

“I was told by the lovely team backstage that another thing in my favour was the fact most of the guys in the audience were ‘laaaaaads’ who, when they see a woman, just revert to Animal mode. And that’s Animal from The Muppets. They just end up shouting WOMAN! WOMAN! in their minds. The fact I wore a sparkly dress also meant they were distracted by something shiny.

“So lots of different tactics meant I didn’t get bottled. If they had been preparing pints of warm liquid excreted from their bodies especially for me, they kept them reserved for another band later on – maybe The Killers or David Guetta… I hope it was the latter because The Killers were fantastic.”

“And afterwards,” I asked, “you felt what?”

It looks like not everyone in the audience yesterday was a lad

“I imagine,” replied Juliette, “that will be how it is for the first performance of my actual show at the Fringe in the Gilded Balloon – terror and then fun. That’s why performing is amazing – it’s real life. A mix of the best and the worst. Maybe the preview reviewers might get their nipples out too… I don’t know.

“After the show yesterday I was so high – on life, not whatever those guys in the front row had been taking. I wanted to do it all again. I don’t know… Maybe I will get the chance again one day.

Juliette foregrounded by either arms or legs

“Emotionally, my inner tweenager was overjoyed – I’d just realised a childhood ambition. All those days I had dreamed of singing a song to adoring fans, wearing a cool dress; all those days I had fantasised about it in my bedroom at home and drew little pictures of myself performing on stage – putting those pictures in a little homemade magazine inspired by such intellectual publications as Bliss magazine – I was NOT a cool little girl.

“And then finally, yesterday, I had realised that little uncool girl’s dream. It felt brilliant. But not as good as I imagine the first show at the Fringe will feel – That has been fewer years gestating but I think I care about it in the long term far more.”

“How does yesterday fit into your Fringe show?” I asked.

Juliette wants to recreate T in the Park orgasm

“The pop star section is at the end of the show,” explained Juliette, “and there will be proof of all that I’ve done in all this mad research on video and in photo form throughout the show on a Powerpoint. I don’t want to give too much away, but the pop star bit is a big climax of the show. Much like the orgasm I had walking off stage at T in the Park yesterday. It’s meant to be euphoric, life-affirming and uplifting.

“What did you think when you woke up this morning?” I asked.

“Did that really happen?” said Juliette. “Followed, right now as I’m talking to you, by thinking: Seriously – anything can happen. We can make anything happen if we want it to – and if we work hard enough for it.”

“Did you video yesterday’s performance for YouTube?

“Yes, some kind fellow performers filmed it for me. And I did a little introduction to camera afterwards to explain it. I’ll be editing that in the next day or two and get it online. And, if I can do a plug…”

“Yes you can,” I said.

Downloadable Dreamers from iTunes, Spotify & Amazon

“Anyone can buy the song I performed yesterday from iTunes, Spotify and Amazon – Just search for Dreamers (When I Grow Up).

“All the money raised until the end of the Fringe is going to Children in Need.

“As is all the money raised from auctioning off the When I Grow Up Dreambook – which is being signed by all kinds of exciting people – already including Janey Godley, Robin Ince, Stewart Lee and more. They’re all writing in it what they wanted to be as a child and what they do now. It will be on eBay during or just after the Fringe.”

“And when is the pop video you shot for the song – which I blogged about – going online?”

“Hopefully later this week.”

“So,” I asked, “what you have learned from all this is…?”

“That I think the Fringe might actually be a more restful time than this past week,” laughed Juliette. “And it would be a terrible waste of a life if we didn’t do something we at least enjoy, right?”

YOU CAN SEE A VIDEO OF JULIETTE’S PERFORMANCE HERE:

Comedian Juliette Burton to sing at T In The Park and hopes to avoid STDs

Next weekend, it’s T In The Park, Scotland’s annual attempt at the Glastonbury Festival, with music from Killers, Mumford & Sons, The Proclaimers, Snoop Dogg, Stereophonics and Juliette Burton…

Hold on… Juliette Burton.? The comedian?

Yes?

Singing?

Yes.

How come?

So I asked her.

Juliette & Frodo: the fellowship of T In The Park

“Well,” she told me yesterday, “very early on in the research for my Edinburgh Fringe show When I Grow Up I was telling a then-contact, now-friend, Frodo McDaniel – yes, that is his real name – about the concept of the show and what I would try to achieve. The concept is me trying to be all the things that I wanted to be when I was a child.

“He seemed to love the idea of the show. And, when he heard one of the things I had wanted to be as a child and was still trying to be for my show was a pop star, he immediately invited me to perform on the stage he produces at T in the Park – because he loved the concept of the show and wanted to help me realise that ambition.”

“Just the one song?” I asked. “With backing by…?”

“Yep, just the one song,” said Juliette. “I will sing Dreamers (When I Grow Up) live myself and my backing will be from Frankie Lowe who composed, recorded and produced the song. He’ll be like the guy in the Pet Shop Boys who stands at the back of the stage with a keyboard and a cool pair of sunglasses. I even got him the sunglasses. They were a freebie in the Brighton Fringe participants’ bags. They’re orange.”

The downloadable Dreamers (When I Grow Up) song

“So you won’t be performing with the Killers or Stereophonics?” I asked.

“I will be performing next Sunday afternoon as part of Rufus & Ben’s Cabaret Quiz,” Juliette told me. “Apparently I am the special musical guest. I might be a thespian performer who performs comedy and Fringe shows,” she laughed, “but, you know, multi-platform, crossover comedy is the future! And if 50 Cent and Brittany Spears can be singers who supposedly act, why can’t I be a comedy actor who very occasionally supposedly sings. VERY occasionally. Supposedly. Very.

“I’m not suggesting I’m any good by the way,” added Juliette in a very British way. A very British way. Very. “People can judge that for themselves by downloading the song from iTunes, Amazon or Spotify – Dreamers (When I Grow Up) – I just want to have some fun and try to make the dreams of my inner tweenager come true.”

“And you’re very good at publicity,” I said. “It’s the BBC broadcasting background.”

There is a clip on YouTube of Juliette rehearsing for the upcoming music video of Dreamers.

“Is all this part of your desperate Masterplan,” I asked, “to become famous at something… at anything?”

“Masterplan?!” said Juliette. “You think this is planned? I’m honestly not driven by fame, but I would love to be successful at something… but not anything! I would love to make my Edinburgh Fringe show a success this year – it’s my first solo show. The song is a part of the show and the adventure of performing at T in the Park is a part of that adventure. It’s me trying to realise this – one of many – childhood dreams. And if this helps towards making the show a success and if it helps encourage people to see the show then that’s my goal achieved.”

“Like I said,” I repeated. “Good at publicity. And you will sing the song in the show?”

“Nope,” said Juliette. “The show itself is an hour-long docu-comedy – a true story told on stage. The music video will be finished, I’m told, next week – before T in the Park – and it will be online then. The video will also be on the projector screen as part of the stage show. And the song will be played as I’m telling the story about me trying to be a pop star. And there will be footage of me performing at T in the Park.”

“Like I said,” I repeated again. “Good at publicity. How are your rehearsals going for T In the Park?”

“Ummmm,” said Juliette. “Yeah… Rehearsals… I should probably consider fitting that in at some point… But I do know exactly what I’m wearing. That’s the most important bit of being a pop star, right?”

Comic Juliette can make people cry

“Could be,” I agreed. “That and publicity. And how are your Fringe rehearsals going?”

“Ah! Now!” said Juliette. “Those have been in the diary for a long while and are already going well. Scots comic JoJo Sutherland is directing my show and we’ve already been rehearsing lots.”

“The fact you live in Edinburgh must help,” I said.

“It does,” agreed Juliette. “Jojo is brilliant – She totally ‘gets’ the show, but I keep making her cry. It’s meant to be a comedy! Did it make you cry John?”

“I think I had a tear in my eye when I saw the first preview,” I said. “The audience has no warning you’re going to suddenly pull the floor out from under them.”

“It’s just two weeks now until the Cambridge previews,” said Juliette. I’m pretty nervous. It’ll be the first proper preview of the proper show in its entirety.  It’s all a bit mad right now: getting music together, wrestling with PowerPoint issues, getting final filming and editing done, trying to do a bit of PR, getting final flyer design sorted, the ‘special’ project promoted, learning lines, keeping the social media active, rehearsing, trying to write some stuff for the Fringe Comedy Academy, trying not to want to run away from it all…”

“Are you regretting going solo” I asked, “after having the comfort blanket of being part of Mace & Burton?”

“I haven’t gone solo,” said Juliette. “I still work with Lizzy (Mace). We’re still working hard on our Rom Com Con movie screenplay and – if I can raise the funds – we’re both keen to go to the Adelaide Fringe next year together.

“But this is a solo show… Do I regret doing it? No. I’m really struggling with all the stress and I do desperately miss having help to manage it all. When I hear the first audience laugh I will know it has been worth it.

“I’m hoping that something might get picked up this Fringe,” added Juliette. “I mean my ideas by the industry…not an STD.”

(Juliette used to be a BBC presenter and is is no stranger to music festivals, as this showreel demonstrates)