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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: 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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I was given tickets to see her in Edinburgh, not a single laugh to be had anyone. She really is not funny, and the people who say "Oh you must just not understand her" are quite frankly offensive and wrong. I understand her, what's to understand? There is little clever about her act, and I understand everything she does/tries to do, but it is just not working. The rest of the audience clearly agreed because they weren't laughing either. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that the point of a comedian, to make people laugh? Perhaps someone could invent a new form of entertainment called 'Twee Whimsical Tory Bashing' so the people who enjoy that sort of thing can go to see her and the real comedy fans can go to see comedy.

Not Keen, Sorry, January 2013

I happen to think Josie is a true comic master, her ability to tell twee, whimsical material that isn't even remotely amusing but still have a career is truly incredible

Barry, August 2012

Look, everyone, she's got no clothes on!

Richard, January 2012

Josie Long is one of the best comedians around. She's not for everyone but unfortunately with comedy nobody likes to admit they don't get something. People can admit they don't understand a film or that a certain type of band is not for them but when it comes to comedy furiously insist "I do get it! It's just not funny! If it was funny, I'd like it because I have a great sense of humour!" I'd love to see Josie on TV but I know that with more exposure she'll get more people turning up to her gigs expecting mainstream comedy. Thats a shame and I hope her gigs don't become overrun with idiot hecklers expecting rapid-fire one-liners about the same topical bullshit everyone on tv is banging on about.rnrnI've seen her twice this month and I've got tickets to see her again next month. She's quickly becoming the only comedian I drop everything to go and see. She's also beautiful. Not that that matters.

Ryan, December 2011

Saw Josie tonight at the Hare and Hounds in Birmingham. Supremely talented and funny, intellectual, cerebral and surreal. Original thinking and hugely entertaining. Would thoroughly recommend. One female friend likened her to having the elegance and beauty of Drew Barrymore coupled with a sweet nature and intelligence. Hope that she comes to Birmingham again.

m, December 2011

A group of us saw Josie a few weeks ago in Dublin. It was embarassingly unfunny by anyone's standards,the stories she was telling just werent even anecdotally funny we thought a lot of stuff was lost in translation for an irish audience but it seems looking at these reviews, she just isn't funny. She seems very nice but I wouldn't go to see her again

Dave, July 2011

I'm utterly bewildered by some of the comments. Josie is wildly talented and incredibly funny. Her gigs go about a dozen steps beyond bog-standard stand-up , I think that's what some people struggle with.

James, March 2011

Big fan of Josie Long. She is very very funny. Not got see her live yet but very much looking forward to doing so. She is right up there with my favourite comedians now.

Richard, January 2011

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