“Can you say I wafted in looking stunning?” asks Lou Sanders, dissolving into laughter before she’s even finished her sentence. She is joking, of course – the comedian isn’t actually desperate for a hyperbolically awed 2000s glossy magazine-style depiction of herself in print. It’s just that airing the silliest, cringiest, most wildly conceited response to any given situation – always coupled with a self-effacing acknowledgment of the ridiculousness of what she’s saying – is Sanders’ stock in trade.
What really happens is that Sanders strides into the Groucho Club (admittedly, quite a 2000s glossy mag setting) dressed, I will say, in a very fetching lilac jumpsuit. She is late but doesn’t waste time with small talk. Before she’s even properly sat down, she launches into her list of worries: she is anxious she’ll be misquoted, or that something she tells me off the record will be accidentally printed. She then asks, out of nowhere, whether I’ve been crying. I haven’t, I say, suddenly paranoid that my mascara is halfway down my cheeks. “Oh,” she chuckles nervously. “Maybe I’m projecting.”
