On feminism

From Dave's One Night Stand

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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.comedy awards for her solo Edinburgh debut, Kindness and Exuberance.

She was subsequently nominated for the Edinburgh comedy award three years running: 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Josie Long: Fringe 2012
Live Review
Pleasance Courtyard

You can tell Josie Long hasn’t been a leftist campaigner for long. She became politicised by the Coalition taking power two years ago, and is already frustrated that her activism hasn’t turned the world entirely against the Tories, the ‘obvious baddies’ in her binary world. Clearly no one told her about the lifetime of struggle when she signed up for the cause.

‘It feels so unfair!’ she wails like a petulant pre-teen denied her second bowl of ice-cream, when actually talking about the dismantling of social assets, including the NHS. The childish image is completed by her nervy habit of tugging away distractedly at her T-shirt, a technique that renders her unchallenging, whatever politics she may spout.

Impatiently aggravated by the lack of political progress, she turns much of this hour on to her own personal progress, her mind focussed by turning 30. She wonders why, at such an advanced age, she finds herself living in a trendy warehouse conversion she hates, unable to drive and with nothing much to her life except a job she enjoys. She isn’t really sure of much anymore, and a ridiculous online ‘Things To Do By The Time You’re 30’ list gives her no direction – but quite a lot of material.

Eventually this turns back to politics again: publicly-owned open spaces, libraries, hospitals give her  a sense of security and belonging that she now knows she has to put up a fight for.

Getting there, she leaps around between topics, boasting of her mountain-climbing exploits, adoring French socialism or delivering an hilarious Ed Miliband routine, in which she imagines him casting off his ineffectual manner to expose himself as some socialist mobster, getting heavy with the mega-wealthy. It’s a dense show as ideas and routines clamour for attention, and she enthusiastically name-checks the likes of Vonnegut, Larkin, Alistair Gray and Logan’s Run. This is an hour which again comes with its own reading list – contained in the home-drawn programmes she still hands out.

But it’s a bit of a scattergun approach, too, without the explicit driving force of last year’s excellent show about her political awakening – even though she has a way of sneaking in politics even when the audience is distracted by something else, and ultimately making all the elements slide into place.

The result is that the ideas and stories are more satisfying in the long run, once all this has time to settle in the brain, rather than at the time you’re watching it, when the flurry of information feels a little cacophonous.

Eventually she reaches the conclusion of the various parts – a message to herself and fellow activists, to hang on in there – a point reached far more circuitously, intelligently and wittily than just showing us a  picture of a cat clinging on to a branch.

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Although trapped in a body of a child, don't be fooled. Though she may come across absent-minded, oddball, even childish, she is in fact a shrewd, fiercely intelligent comic ninja - who can kill you with the same joke in five different ways before you hit the ground. I never thought I would find a joke about Paul McCartney and Axl Rose (with the punchline 'lemon meringue pie') so hilarious. An inspiration to all comics, female or otherwise.

Ed O'Meara, April 2006

Always genius. Mesmerising and wonderful - fills you with smiles as well as laughter

Paul, February 2006

Josie Long is great. She's one of those people that if you ask comedians they love her and if you ask the punters they love her. One of the few comics I always recommend to others to see because she is just brilliant

Big Rich, January 2006

Simply fucking brilliant

Juliet Meyers, January 2006

Clearly the best stand-up in the UK today. She is untouchably fantastic.

Timothy Leighton, September 2005

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