Comedian Maisie Adam tells Craig Meighan about 10 things that changed her life...
1 Chocolate Orange
HONESTLY, a top tier chocolate. Everybody else in the chocolate manufacturing industry should have gone, ‘Yep, that’s it. No one’s gonna beat that. We’ll call it a day there’. There is nothing that can’t be improved by being handed a Chocolate Orange. Honestly, I love it. I love it, love it, love it. It makes me very, very happy. I wouldn’t swap it for the world.
Just finding a chocolate bar that wasn’t your traditional bar, you had to eat it a few segments at a time, I don’t know but it’s changed the way of I view confectionery. It’s the best.
2 Youth theatres
WHEN I think about what helped me get to where I am, without sounding too profound, but when I think about what set me up with the tools and skills, and, most of all, confidence, youth theatres have played a huge part in that.
And it’s something that is, for some reason, at threat of being cut when there’s cuts to the arts. They are so, so vital. When I grew up, I was in the Leeds Playhouse Youth Theatre, what was then the West Yorkshire Playhouse Youth Theatre. I was in one in Harrogate Theatre.
I had a really good drama teacher at school who encouraged me to go for the National Youth Theatre. And doing that, seeing arts outside your own region, and seeing, crucially, that it’s a viable career path is so important.
What I really like about youth theatres as well is, when I think back to when I was there, there was the classic confident stagey kids who knew they always wanted to do performance. But then there were kids at my youth theatre that went to different schools and might have been having a rough time and the parents suggested it to get build up confidence … I don’t want to stereotype but I found that in my local youth theatres we were like a big group of sort of misfits. It was really, lovely.
You weren’t judged on how good you could project your voice. You weren’t judged on anything. You were just appreciated to be there and working towards making some piece together.
I think they’re fantastic and I think they should be protected at all costs.
3 Seeing Kate Bush live
IT was probably the best gig I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen loads of brilliant gigs. And it’s always hard to pick your best one. But I think for the following reasons Kate Bush would have to be that.
First of all, it was the first, and to this day only, gig I’ve been to where it enforced a no phone rule. And I think with the way that social media and phones and the internet and screens are becoming more and more synonymous with everyday life, a live experience is something really, really special.
I love going to concerts, music gigs, but I found a kind of … maybe it’s getting older, maybe you do just become a grumpy old versions of your mum and dad, but I found myself getting really frustrated when I get to a good spot to watch an artist that is only in my town for that one night and I’ve had tickets for over a year. And then the lights go down and you see their silhouette step out on stage and instinctively thousands of phone screens go up into the air.
I think you’re lying if you say that that doesn’t take away from the experience.
So Kate Bush, she hadn’t performed for 25 years and she was at the Hammersmith Apollo and she was only doing something like 20 days and me and my mum managed to get tickets. It was fantastic because there’s no footage of that gig anywhere and rightly so because it exists only in that room on that one night. It was amazing.
4 So You Think You’re Funny award
IT’S similar to the youth theatres. I think about what were the key factors that helped me get to where I am right now and that path doesn’t go the same way if it wasn’t for So You Think You’re funny.
I was really new to comedy. I’d been doing it for a month and I was still going down to London a lot on the Megabus, because I was still living in Yorkshire, to these open night gigs, and this comedian said I should do a newcomer competition.
If you look at, not even just who’s won that historically, who’s just made the final, it’s just a list of all the comedians we know today. So I thought, well, I’ll give it a go. I did it and never heard anything.
Then I was working in an ice cream van in Leeds when I got this call saying I need to come up to Edinburgh Fringe for the semi-final.
I had never been to Edinburgh before, it was about two weeks’ notice so the train price was through the blooming roof but I came all the way up to Edinburgh, thinking I could put the semi-final on a poster, and got through to the final.
Then I had to come back up again, so I had to swap my ice cream shift again. I came up at the end of the Fringe thinking ‘in for a penny in for a pound’. It was the biggest gig I’d ever done and I blooming won it. The prize alone was £2500 which was more money than I’d ever had and I got a trip to Montreal Just for Laughs festival and crucially Gilded Balloon put my show on the next year at the Fringe. I also got signed at the back of it. It was a huge catalyst for me.
5 The Women’s Euros final
I LOVE everything football: men’s teams, watching it, playing it. It’s a huge part of my life and always has been. But the women’s game has not had the recognition, respect, attention, funding and platform that it deserves for years. There’s a huge history as to why there’s been that disparity.
England’s team last year, the game they played, the campaign of getting people who never normally show an interest in football, but could somehow feel connected to it. And that’s what’s important.
I say this as somebody who loves football across the board. But there are a lot of people who feel like they can’t enjoy football because of the more toxic aspects of it. There’s a horrible fan culture a lot of the time, particularly in the men’s game. There are a lot of negatives in football that just don’t exist culturally in the women’s game from a fan’s perspective.
The women’s game has just as much tenacity, suspense, excitement and thrills throughout the 90 minutes but none of the shit. None of the underlying feeling that something could kick off, that something could turn nasty, that your kid that you’ve brought to their first game might be exposed to something that’s pretty inappropriate. The atmosphere at those games in that tournament was off the scale. It was wonderful.
6 Moving to Brighton
THIS is not to say I don’t miss where I’m from. I love being up in Yorkshire in that rural village countryside that I’m from. Moving to a city that I had no connection to was nerve-wracking. It is genuinely one of the best decisions of my life. It’s got a thriving comedy circuit, which when you’re starting out, is incredible. You need those nights that are platforming local comedians doing stand-up. The same way if you go to a pub where a local lad is playing guitar. Brighton is bursting with local community arts. Now Brighton is home for me. I don’t see myself moving. It’s such a good choice I’ve made.
7 Heelys
WHAT, shoes that you can suddenly just roll around places in? Why have they stopped? They were really popular and now no one wears them anymore. They were excellent.
Every time I’m in an airport, or a supermarket, I think I’d be getting around there quicker in a set of Heelys. Especially in airport when they’ve got ramps. Bring them back. Bring them back.
8 Falling in love
IT’S the best. When I think about my career, it can be very stressful. There’s a lot of travelling, a lot of being on your own. I love that and I enjoyed it when I was single but there’s something to be said about coming back home to your best mate who is supportive but also doesn’t entertain the ego of a comedian.
When you come back, you come back to home. Doesn’t matter if I’ve sold out a show that night or died on my arse, it’s nice to have that constant that you come back to and know that somebody would love you regardless, it’s really, really lovely. And it does keep you going. So falling in love. It’s the best. It’s so love.
9 Depop
I HAVE to sometimes bring several outfits when I am doing a telly show, and this is such a first-world problem, but sometimes it’s like I am coming up with an outfit and I’ll think I’ve worn that before and it’s really not sustainable.
It’s so annoying jamming your wardrobe with stuff you know you’re only gonna wear once. Depop is a fantastic solution to that. I get so much stuff off there. Secondary to that, you can follow the Instagram page of Depop Dramas, which is comedy gold. It’s absolutely excellent. I’d encourage everybody to get on that.
10 Good teachers
GOD, they’re fantastic, if you have a good teacher. And I was thinking about this because my mind immediately went to my drama teacher, Mrs Bray, who was again sort of crucial in implanting the idea that theatre or the arts were a viable career choice.
I had a fantastic English teacher called Mr Bean. Yes, I’m not making that up. And he really changed the way I read text and thought about writing. And I still implement some of that when I write my shows now, but then it’s also important in the subjects you’re not good at. And I was terrible at maths. I still am but I had a really good maths teacher at school that didn’t make you feel stupid.
I think it’s really important when you have those teachers that take specific, bespoke interest in each individual pupil and nurture their needs, rather than their own sort of results agenda. It does stick with you. You remember that compassion. Good teachers are the best and bad teachers equally have a lasting effect but I wanted to give a shout out to the good ones.
