When people ask me if I’ve ever had any bad experiences as a female comedian, it’s depressing that my reply is usually that I’m ‘lucky’ I haven’t. I’m a stand-up based in London, one of the most progressive cities in the world for it. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.
I get asked a lot at the moment about how comedy has changed, with people assuming the old cliché of, ‘You can’t say anything these days.’ You can, but your audience is your own litmus test, and they’ve modernised, too. If Russell Brand did a club gig this weekend and joked about loving it when a woman chokes during oral sex, in my experience the crowd would tense up. It wouldn’t get a good reaction. (Brand vehemently denies all the allegations against him and says he has never had non-consensual sex.) I talk about sensitive subjects in my own comedy; my latest show, Not My Finest Hour, is about morally questionable relationships, abortion, sex and losing my virginity. Nothing is off limits as long as it’s done in a way in which the joke is on the right person (in my case, myself).
Despite working primarily in London — where gigs and promoters are, for the most part, actively dedicated to improving the scene in terms of women’s safety at events, diverse line-ups and not booking acts known to be problematic — it’s still commonly known who to avoid, and who to advise people not to book, on account of reprehensible behaviour. Just because I haven’t had any bad experiences first hand doesn’t mean I haven’t heard about other people’s. There are WhatsApp groups where female performers share warnings about acts whose behaviour has made them uncomfortable. This springs from an industry that for a long time didn’t seem to care how a performer behaved off stage.
I think this lack of concern by those with the ability to do something about it epitomises the entire issue with the Brand exposé and those like it. We’re all grimly aware of how these things go now. We hear rumours for years, they eventually become public and in our very divided cultural discourse, two camps battle it out; and wider conversations emerge about how this person was allowed to get as far as they did. And then a few years later, it happens again.
Industries such as comedy may seem like they’re crawling with predators. They’re not. It’s no better or worse in our world than it is in many others. You just hear about ours. There are people in other fields who’ll have warnings about them in private groups, and sometimes it will come out, too. What needs to change is the length of time these warnings stay in the shadows before official action is taken. When I watched Dispatches, the allegations followed a pattern I’ve seen everywhere I’ve worked. Everybody knowing. Nobody saying anything on record. A powerful person allegedly being enabled again and again.
I have female friends who still work in television, who have been propositioned by presenters while on the job, and to whom producers have said, ‘Sorry you had to deal with that,’ when they saw it happen. Not sorry enough to reprimand the presenter though. Not sorry enough that if my friend complained, the presenter would face consequences. Imagine if we started putting people ahead of profit and ego.
If we want a world where we don’t see another programme like that Dispatches one, where we never again see someone we used to think was just a harmless entertainer cut down and shown for what they allegedly are, before a WhatsApp group alerts you, create a culture in which we stop them before it gets to this. I hope we never watch another Russell Brand, because I hope we never get to know who he is in the first place.
