It made me a desperate Scientologist of feminism.

Felicity Ward on her comedy favourties

In no particular order...

Groundhog Day

Actually this is in a particular order because Groundhog Day is just brilliant. Start to finish, this film is just about comedy perfection. Bill Murray's timing, suicidal demeanour, his disappointment in life and what feels like in the viewers as well is spectacular. Harold Ramis did just about everything in this film: he wrote it, directed it, played a doctor - and just quietly he nailed all of them. The bit parts and cameos are wonderful, hell, even Andie McDowell is enjoyable in it.

League of Gentlemen

Sometime in the early 2000s I saw this show on the ABC in Australia late one Saturday night and I thought there must have been a mistake. So funny. So dark. So dense. I wondered how they'd got it on TV at all. Then I proceeded to watch it religiously. As a result, a lot of the characters I created working on a sketch show had this grotesqueness that I feel came from knowing there were people out there giving me permission to do so.

The Late Show

This is a bit of an Australian institution. A lo-fi sketch show from the early Nineties. Featuring such segments as Bargearse & Shitscared, this show was my seminal introduction to sketch comedy... well, when I was old enough to understand what was going on. The group behind the Late Show, Working Dog, went on to make one of the most iconic and well-loved Australian films of all time as well: The Castle. They are very great.

Bridesmaids

This has become my 'blanky' on the road. I'm a fairly self-sufficient person and most things I'm cool with, but sometimes when I've been touring for months, and I'm tired and I'm too skinny, and I miss my friends, I'll eat dinner in bed and watch a movie that I know will make me feel good: Bridesmaids has become this movie. Bridesmaids and Point Break. Watching those back to back should be a scientifically approved treatment for depression. Obviously I'd go on and on about Point Break here too, but it's not a comedy. It's very, very serious... even though they only live to get radical.

Maria Bamford

Her 'Standard Comedy Act' routine is amazing. I saw it in Melbourne a couple of years ago and I was doubled over. She is dazzling. The clip that's up on YouTube isn't anywhere near as incredible as it is live, but still, she's a god. Let's leave it at that and move on shall we?

Caitlin Moran's How To Be A Woman

Goddammit this is a funny book. It's changed my life a bit actually. I keep buying it for people and thrusting my copy into people's faces, like a desperate Scientologist of feminism. I want to give it a bit of space to breathe before I read it again... but I'm totally going to. It's articulate, disgusting, smart, puerile, honest, hilarious, compulsive reading. She's ridiculously talented and insightful and I wish she was my mother/sister... I mean one of the two. I don't mean an incest hybrid of both.

Published: 4 Aug 2012

Live comedy picks

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