What fun it is to spend an afternoon with Helen Thorn and Ellie Gibson, AKA the Scummy Mummies, making jokes and talking nonsense at Thorn’s kitchen table in south London. Having planned to take no more than 45 minutes to discuss the 10th anniversary of their podcast and their careers in general – smash hit podcast, sold-out live tours, two books, two Guinness world records and more – I end up staying for more than two hours in a full-on chat-athon. Thorn (Australian, warm, funny, 44) and Gibson (Londoner, cynical, funny, 45) are the best sort of company: indiscreet, hilarious, good at sharing the spotlight.
No surprise, then, that their Scummy Mummies podcast, which they started on 29 July 2013, was a hit from the off. Its format has changed – “Initially we were a bit Radio 4, you know, we’ll review things and be newsy!” – but the USP of the show has always been the same: their friendship. The podcast is, essentially, this kitchen table chat: them being themselves, telling uproarious stories of where their lives are at, and asking guests questions that interest them.
“Right from the start, people said: ‘Oh, thank you! You’re saying the things we think,’” says Thorn. “And they like that the podcast is two best friends hanging out, so they feel like they’ve got company. One of the things about motherhood, when your kids are babies, is it’s incredibly lonely. People listen in the middle of the night when they’re breastfeeding.”
These days, “two funny friends being funny together” podcasts are everywhere, as are “oh-em-gee parenting is HARD” shows. But 10 years ago, when podcasting was dominated by serious-minded Americans, the Scummy Mummies were unusual.
“There was a family podcast that started around the same time as us, which was two English men,” remembers Gibson. “And I don’t want to do them down, but it was all, ‘Hey, what have you been up to this week?’ ‘Well, I’ve been checking out car seats, actually, Oscar.’ And then they’d spend 40 minutes talking about car seats, with this undercurrent of what great dads they were, patting each other on the back for having changed a nappy. Years later, we ended up basing these characters in the live show on them: Rob and Rob, ‘the right-on dads, putting the men in feMANism’. They had a fermenting workshop called Bro-biotics and they made him-chi.”
It was Gibson’s idea to start the podcast. In early 2013, having spent almost 10 years as a video games journalist, she was enjoying being the mother of a 18-month-old boy (“I’m one of those annoying people that actually liked the baby bit”) when she surprised herself by deciding to try standup comedy. Her dad, Jim Barclay, had been an alternative comedian in the 80s, and she’d always wanted to try it but had never dared: “People always say: ‘Do your dream!’,” she says. “But if you do, and it turns out you’re shit at it, then you’ve got no dream. But I’d had this baby, and I was so happy that I thought: ‘Well, it doesn’t matter if I fuck it up.’” She didn’t, and at her third gig, in Deptford, south London, she met Thorn. Gibson thought Thorn was “amazing” and tried to get spots on the same comedy bills. “And I’d get there and be like: ‘Oh, imagine seeing you here again!’” Thorn: “That was lovely.” Gibson: “Was it lovely, or was it stalking?”
Thorn had been a successful comedian in her native Australia, winning prominent talent competitions – “I came first and some guy called Tim Minchin came sixth” – and hosting a series on national TV. She’d created a one-hour live show, Helen Thorn Is Arty Farty, based around her other job: working in contemporary art galleries. But when she moved with her then-boyfriend to the UK, she gave up standup; after they married and she had kids, all thoughts of a comedy career disappeared.
“And then, one night, when I was breastfeeding my son at 3am, I thought: ‘What the fuck have I done?’” she remembers. “‘I’ve lost everything about myself for the past six years!’ So I booked a standup gig.” At her very first gig back, she met Gibson. “She was wearing a leather jacket. I thought she was so cool.”
Thorn and Gibson soon discovered they had a freakish amount in common: both had been bullied at school and used humour to deflect; both had insisted on changing schools to one that was over an hour away from their home; both thought Spinal Tap the best movie ever (Thorn’s first Christmas gift to Gibson was a necklace engraved with “You can’t dust for vomit”, a line from the film). More weirdly, and more prosaically, they lived around the corner from each other, and had given birth to sons (Thorn’s second child, Gibson’s first) just 11 days apart, under the care of the same midwife.
Gibson suggested making the podcast soon after they met. They recorded using one microphone (they still do), and Gibson edited it herself (she still does). The first few episodes are the sound of them not only gradually understanding what podcasting is, but also each other. “Over the first couple of years, you’re listening to our friendship form and grow,” says Gibson, “and then it reshapes and shifts into what it is now.”
In the early years, they seemed almost too similar – a comedy director told them: “You’re like twins, you want to please each other all the time, and there needs to be conflict and contrast.” But they’ve gradually relaxed into their differences, as well as their similarities. And they are different. “I’m disorganised, and always late, and just generally fumbly-bumbly,” says Thorn. “Ellie is much more organised and officious and brilliant.”
“Because we’re Scummy Mummies, I had to sort of come out as organised,” says Gibson. “I had to say: ‘I’ve been living a lie. I’ve actually got an alphabetised spice drawer.’”
Their podcast has been downloaded more than 5m times, and the community around it – 95% women, 5% men – has grown alongside them, embracing all their spin-offs and outside projects, some connected, some not. The Scummy Mummies live show evolved out of the podcast, but is very different, featuring sketches, outfits (gold catsuits, pink catsuits, silly wigs, vagina bonnets) and props (“If you’ve got a prop, that’s one less joke you have to write”). And it’s changed as they have. It used to feature baby stuff, such as them doing a blind nappy change, with dollies and Nutella; now, they sing a song called Mum Ho Number 9, about Thorn’s sex life.
They’ve found that most of the crowd at their live gigs are at similar life stages to them: meaning, past the “wine o’clock” toddler mayhem stage, in their 40s, with older kids and having lived through different difficulties. One such experience was when, in 2015, Gibson’s second son was born nine weeks early. He spent six weeks in hospital, and Gibson performed an hour-long Scummy Mummies gig while he was still in the critical ward: “When there’s a crisis, you either hide under the duvet, or you get out your clipboard to order everyone around,” she says. “I was like: ‘I want to do the fucking show.’ To be honest, I was crackers.”
And Thorn’s marriage ended, suddenly, in early 2020, just before lockdown, when she picked up her husband’s blazer so her daughter could dress as the Doctor on World Book Day, and found a note that revealed he’d been having an affair. She doesn’t talk about the details, but the breakup was pretty brutal. “We sat at this table, and I said: ‘Why did you have an affair?’” she says. “And he said, ‘You go off and have your nice lunches with Ellie and I had no one. So I had to find someone to have a connection with.’ And I was like: ‘I wasn’t fucking her! She’s my friend and my colleague.’ It wasn’t my career that ended it. He ended it.”
The podcast where Thorn reveals her marriage split (number 180) is a lovely one: funny, but also very touching. And since the split, Thorn has found a new community – “It’s been such a beautiful thing. All these women came out and said, ‘I’m a single mum’. One in four parents is a single parent” – and managed to write a book, Get Divorced, Be Happy, in a five-month frenzy, at the start of 2021. “She wrote a Sunday Times bestseller during the third lockdown,” says Gibson. “And I completed [video game] Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.”
Gibson, as you can tell, has stayed true to her gaming roots, starring in the panel show Dara Ó Briain’s Go 8 Bit on Dave, running her own gaming Twitch channel, EllieGibsonGames, and, a few months ago, setting a Guinness world record for pretend jet-washing a pretend wall on a computer game for 24 hours. “It was power-washing, Miranda, and that was Lara Croft’s wall,” she says. It was for Borne, a premature birth charity, and she won the world record with a time of 24 hours, six minutes, 33 seconds.
Which brings us to the Scummy Mummies’ recent, world-beating, Everest-centred, highest-ever comedy live gig. Also a Guinness world record. The certificate is on Thorn’s wall. It was, unsurprisingly, Gibson’s idea: she wouldn’t let Thorn read anything about Everest, in case she freaked out and refused. So Gibson made all the extensive arrangements: how they would get there (they walked), how they would take the height measurements (a Garmin, pre-calibrated), who they would perform to (everyone at base camp). The previous holder of the highest-ever comedy gig had just helicoptered in and out; it took them 11 days to tramp up to Everest base camp. It was -15C (5F).
Unfortunately, when they got there, they discovered that, at under 3,000 metres (9,842ft), base camp wasn’t pitched high enough. The previous world record comedy gig was 5,302 metres. They had to clamber up some rocks to 5,364 metres and then attract an audience. (A Guinness requirement: 30 paying audience members.) Their team was too small, so they had to find 27 paying strangers. On Everest.
“So I put on the best tune I could think of as loud as possible,” says Gibson. “Which was Vengaboys, We Like to Party. And like meerkats, all these people started coming out of tents…”
Thorn: “We did 32 minutes. Oh my God. They didn’t like our yak jokes. They did cheer very loudly when we took off several layers to reveal the catsuits.”
Gibson: “We normally give away a bottle of prosecco, but obviously we couldn’t do that, as you can’t risk drinking because you might die. So the prize was a Snickers bar. That got a cheer, but it was literally the hardest gig we’ve ever done…”
They laugh, and so do I.
Thorn: “Lewisham to Everest. Amazing.” It is amazing, I say. From your kitchen table to the top of the world.
“I went to the Pulp gig the other weekend,” says Gibson. “And when they played Something Changed [about how one evening out can change your life], I livestreamed it to Helen, crying. Because it’s true!”
