Josie Long likes to make friends with the audience. Photo / Supplied by Elephant publicity
She's an Oxford alumni, scriptwriter and award-winning comedian. The delightful Josie Long rambles to Joanna Hunkin about everything and nothing, sort of. Does that make sense?
WOMEN IN COMEDY
I think there are definitely more women starting out in London at the moment. If you go to small gigs, like the gigs above pubs, you'll notice a much more even ratio. It is more like 50-50 and it's not a shock to people to
see a woman come on stage.
There's this weird attitude that people sometimes have that is totally irrelevant to what's actually going on in real life. I find it really backwards. It's just confusing. You get people coming up to you at gigs going, "I don't tend to find women funny," and you're like, "What are you talking about? That's not even true. You've obviously found women funny before ... That is insane."
BOGGLE
I do love it. The show itself overruns anyway but I'll play anyone afterwards. I'll challenge them and I will win.
I do like words. I really love word games and board games and little challenges. I just can't get enough stuff like that. It's the one thing I'm really competitive about. I just enjoy it so much.
STALKERS
I have had a couple of stalkers. I really like the idea of making friends with the audience a little bit and being quite open and chatting to people as they come in. When you meet the audience it disarms them and it disarms you a little bit and it's kind of a nicer atmosphere. I also like doing parts of my show that are a bit interactive. People can get really involved and that's amazing but sometimes you get people who I think are a little bit unhinged and they just don't realise that you don't know them and they don't really know you.
There are worse things. Nobody's tried to stab me or anything. When I get killed, that'll be when it's a shame.
BEING COOL
Through Skins, I now know about five 16 to 18-year-old writers who are my friends. And some of them are properly cool kids from central London, just the hippest kids. And I just feel so embarrassed to be such a dork in front of them. The only way I can even be around them, I just have to pretend that what I'm doing is cool. When in actual fact I'm not cool.
HER OXFORD EDUCATION
I'd really like to think that it did influence me in my writing a bit or at least broaden it out and make me want to write about more things. I wish [my comedy] was more highbrow than it is. I wish I could be like, "Yeah, I just talk about Palestine". I do mention some stuff about this artist that I like and sometimes I'll namedrop a book I like. But I don't know how clever that is.
