Trying is Good

DVD Trailer

More Josie Long videos

In 1999, Josie Long won the BBC New Comedy Award at the age of just 17 - making her too young for the champagne that came as part of the prize. Despite the boost the award would have given to her comedy career, she took time off performing to complete her English degree at Oxford university, returning in 2003.

Following the break, she was named best newcomer in the Chortle awards in 2005, and best breakthrough act the following year. In 2006, she also scooped best newcomer in the if.comeddie awards for her solo Edinburgh debut, Kindness and Exuberance

Josie Long: Be Honourable!
Live Review

After a year away from Edinburgh, festival favourite Josie Long has subtly reinvented herself. No longer just the queen of whimsy, she’s added some attitude, a message and even a character piece.

She’s also added to the traditional hour-long running time of the fringe: advertised at 70 minutes and actually coming in at 80. However, it’s hard to see why – within the extended show there’s a much sharper 60-minute one trying to get out. Because of this verbosity, it’s easy to believe her when she says she wrote a 4,000-word email to an American man, simply because she was enchanted by the photographs he posted on Flickr chronicling what he ate for breakfast every day.

Long dedicates plenty of time to this fixation, repetitively showing us screen after screen of Walter Ezell’s eggs, pancakes and pastries long after we’ve got the point of her obsession, even though she never quite convinces us to share it. Another slight routine attempts to attribute the change in her attitude from the naively optimistic to something more realistic to the fact that she lost weight, an argument that’s absolutely as tenuous as it sounds.

Yet the new maturity does add an extra dimension to her comedy, as she rattles the liberal complacency of which she was herself guilty. Good intentions alone are not enough, she realises, and that living an honourable life is more than going to an organic café.

This new attitude sees her taking on politics for the first time – not in all that much depth, but a start – while she also gets more incisive in her introspection, examining her own intentions and feeling that she’s missing a proper grown-up mentor to guide her.

This is an interesting new direction for Long, a step towards the mainstream with more identifiable routines – such as her encounter with a fantasist paparazzo – and more actual jokes than her previous force-of-niceness shows have displayed. The character which opens the show, an unlikely and abrupt working-class astronaut who can always fall back on her job as a nail technician should the space thing not work out, is also a successful departure.

There is, however, the feeling that this is a bridging show, a statement of intent rather than a confident assertion of her new approach to comedy. But it’s certainly revived interest in Long – as her Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination confirms – as someone with more to offer than an unaffected good nature.

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Saw Josie at this years ed. fest. Not laugh out loud funny, just a nice show for all the family , whimisical and off-beat at times, but she has a nice personality , a winning smile and is sweet . On saying that, she could do with better material and stop spilling out anti-Tory views, which grates a little.

zack, August 2010

Saw Josie last night at Bums on Seats charity gig. Without a doubt the least funny of all the acts, I'm not even sure she could be called a stand-up comedian. Her routine appears to be just a nice person chatting about things, it's all very pleasant but none of it is funny. Raised a few half hearted laughs with her set and that was it. I'm not sure how she has become so popular, can someone explain?

Ted Cole, June 2010

I was also at the Kill for a Seat gig. Probably the worst act I've seen there to be honest. I'm surprised she stayed on for about 50 minutes. She was struggling with the audience after 10 mintues. The audience at this night is very nice and gives all the comics a chance and she wasn't heckled once, which is a surprise because she was very poor. Not sure how shes getting on TV.

Wills, May 2010

Saw Josie Long at the Llangollen Kill for a Seat comedy club last night. We go at least once a month to the 2 clubs local to us and have done for the past year or 2. Josie was the weakest act we've seen. As others have said, she seems sweet - but unfortunately is desperately unfunny. the audience barely raised a laugh, more the occassional embarrassed titter. The embarrassment was for Josie. She should have quit while she was ahead and left the stage sharpish. The attempts at a Welsh accent in a very proudly Welsh town came across very badly - even though I'm sure it wasn't meant that way. After offending the Welsh people in general, she then had a go at the tories - that didn't go down well either.

Sam, May 2010

Just desperately, desperately unfunny; I've seen her live a couple of times, heard her on radio numerous times, and on every single occasion she's been shown up by the other comedians on the same bill/panel game. I agree she seems like a nice person, has a genuinely likeable persona, but so f-ing what? I don't pay twenty quid for an evening of comedy to reassure someone that they're nice, I do is so they'll make me laugh/think/gasp. Josie Long makes me snore.

Danbo, May 2010

I have seen Josie long many times now, never as the main act but as a support. I have to say that I am simply baffled by the praise she gets, and some of the comments on this page confuse me even more! Genius!? Surely not! When compared to the other greats on the scene, such as Munnery, Phil Nichol, Stewart :ee and more. She has failed to raise a laugh from me each time I have seen her, and that includes me and all the people that have attended the gigs with me. She doesn't come across as a comedian, more as a quirky person thrust onto the stage. rnrnHer act lacks any real jokes as such, and normally consists of boring and rambling stories, or facts about herself that are similarly boring. Her style seems to rely a lot on the fact that she looks quirky, but the content of her show lacks any real substance or worth. The fact that she is considered one of the best female stand ups is an affront to all female comedians if you ask me, and in my opinion will only damage the publics opinions of female comics, as she epitomises the general view of them. That is, boring, unfunny, and weird/quirky. I have seen many female comics (never caught their names though) who simply smash Josie to pieces, and deserve all of the praise that she is unduly receiving.

Dave reed, August 2009

I enjoyed her show SO much in Nottingham, I was part of something special. Lots of laugh-out-loud moments and lots of wonder and awe... genuinely something I'd love to see a couple more times because it was such a great show and warms your cockles.

cherise, March 2008

Saw her last night in Cardiff. She suffered from a terrible sound system but otherwise she was brilliant.

Chris, February 2008

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