I worried I’d have to do comedy that was perfectly feminist

Grace Campbell picks her comedy favourites

Edinburgh Fringe Grace Campbell shares her Perfect Playlist...

Cheaper By The Dozen

I’ve always had a compulsive personality. Since I was a child I’ve had a tendency to finish a film and then while the credits are rolling, start the film over again. When I love something I can’t / don’t want to control my obsession.

Cheaper By The Dozen is the first film I remember watching like this. My mum said that when I got the VHS when I was 9, I watched it every day for 56 days running.

I loved Steve Martin’s performance as a chaotic, sometimes selfish, sometimes incredibly loving character, I loved that Hilary Duff was in it because I was a Lizzie McGuire girl, obvs. Plus I fancied Ashton Kutcher. Although I wasn’t from a family of 12, when this film came out my life felt chaotic.

My dad was working in Downing Street [as Tony Blair’s spin doctor] and he was sometimes there, sometimes not. So just like in Cheaper By the Dozen, I felt his job was interfering my life, and I felt that me and Hilary would have connected over that.

Absolutely Fabulous

I was a teenager when me and my friends discovered Ab Fab for ourselves. The first series aired in 1992, before I was born. So when we came to find it, after millions of people had already been using it as their bible, both fashion and alcohol wise, I felt like my own personal brand had then been decided.

Ab Fab inspired me to drink vodka (Glens, not Stolly) smoke cigarettes (Mayfair not Malboro), and one day have an entire wardrobe of Vivienne Westwood suits and Prada bags.

I’m still working on the latter, but it’s impossible to argue the cultural significance this show has had on women.

Angus Thongs And Perfect Snogging

I started secondary school in 2005. This meant that I was the ripe target audience for both the Angus Thongs books, and the film which, I must say, has a soundtrack I still listen to.

Georgia Nicholson was the perfect combination of endearingly uncool and lacking in any fear of putting herself out there. It was a story for the ages, that she managed to pull a young Aaron Johnson.

It inspired me and my friends so much that not only did we refer to ourselves as Ace Gang, it also inspired us not to settle with just any lad in Year 9 at the boys’ school next door. In fact, we it made us set such high expectations for men that still today, none of them have been met.

When Harry Met Sally

Recently, I watched When Harry Met Sally for the first time which is very off-brand for me, as a romcom connoisseur.

My friend Scarlett has told me hundreds of times to watch it, when I’m mid-panic attack and need something to calm me down.

Anyway, one day, mid PA, I watched it. Wow. I loved this film so much that I… yes watched it straight away the next day, and then thereafter spent weeks messaging Scarlett about my obsession for this film, then spent weeks sending her messages about my deep obsession for the film, and then one day she wrote back, ‘I love the way that you’re talking about When Harry Met Sally like you are the person who discovered it.’

Ali Wong: Baby Cobra

I remember watching this special before I’d started doing stand-up but it was a secret contemplation I was having.

Watching Baby Cobra I was relieved. I’d been worried that as a ‘feminist’ I’d have to do comedy that was perfectly feminist. Then I watched this special and I was like… ‘phew, if I do this I don’t have to be a perfect feminist. I can just be a prick and that doesn’t mean I’m letting the team down.’

This special has some jokes that will live in my consciousness forever, and that’s why Ali Wong will forever be one of my heroes.