Episode #402
Alice Fraser first studied law in Sydney, Australia, but found comedy and the Footlights while getting her Master’s degree in rhetoric at Cambridge, and honed her stand-up skills in New York City’s open mics and comedy clubs before returning to Australia as a comedian. You’ve likely heard Fraser’s voice before if you’re a fan of The Bugle. She also hosts a weekly spin-off podcast, The Gargle — and in the first year of the COVID pandemic, she wrote and performed a daily satirical news podcast, The Last Post, set in an alternate dimension. She’s also co-hosted best-selling documentary audiobooks on Audible, and her 2020 stand-up special, Savage, was released as an Amazon Original on Prime Video. Fraser sat down with me between shows in her 2022 Edinburgh Fringe run of her latest hour, Chronos. We had an enjoyable and educational discussion about the harsh economics of stand-up comedy, whether you’re taking your show to the Fringe or just trying to pay the bills and support a family.
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So when I saw your show, I don’t know if you’ve been mentioning this every night, but the show I attended, you were fairly open about the economics of stand-up comedy.
Yes.
And it’s one of those things. I suppose it can be said across industries. People don’t generally want to share their revenues or their expenses.
No. And I think that is part of a system that is designed to make sure that people keep making not enough money. The idea that it is shameful to talk about being underpaid for things — that it’s embarrassing to not make enough money — that you need to front and pretend you’re doing better than you are doing. You know, this idea that understandably, you know, success breeds success. So if you present the appearance of success, it might attract more success. That’s a religious belief. That’s fucking putting out biscuits for the Gods, so they give you more stuff. That’s not true. The truth is, if you talk about how much you make, then you can get together and go, ‘Hey, fuck it, none of us are going to work for less than x.’ Like that’s the actual truth. So, for me, I think it’s important to talk about when you’re being underpaid. And when it’s worth being underpaid. Like, I’m doing this for the exposure, and I think it’ll give me an opportunity and it’s worth it for me in this instance, but it is desperately underpaying me for the amount of work that I’m doing. Just be honest about it. I mean, that’s a thing that I believe.
And that’s one of the things I told you before I turned the microphones on. I’m here and brought for my first Fringe and I’m only staying for 10 days. And that’s all boiled down to economics. I couldn’t afford to stay here for a month. And it was only when I got here that I realized, oh!
No one can.
No one can, and that’s actually a thing that’s being hotly talked about.
Yes. It’s a fascinating thing. Edinburgh Fringe. I love the Edinburgh Fringe, I think it is an incredible flowering of human culture. It’s just that 1000s of people just agree that it exists. And so it exists. Everyone just shows up in August. It happens. What an incredible thing. It’s like the original cryptocurrency — it only exists because everyone has decided that it exists. Is it a sort of an incredibly beautiful sort of fairy land where for a month, nothing matters but art. Money means nothing. Time means nothing. You know, day and night mean nothing. You’re just there to see other people doing the best things that they can do and do your own craft. It’s like a masterclass or a conference or a convention — all of those things packed in together. It’s beautiful. It’s also a fucking nightmare in terms of the economics of it. So you need to be very sure that you’re either willing to pay this ridiculous amount of money for the experience or that you’re being incredibly careful in how you spend your money because you can sink 20 grand into a show no problem and get nothing.
And we’re talking about this in 2022, when it’s become enough of an issue that the venues and the Fringe society are openly responding.
Yes.
When you first came here in 2015, with Savage, what were the economics like for you then?
So with Savage: I’ve always been fairly conservative about spending money on performing. So I did it with the free Fringe and I stayed in a shared flat with a bunch of old road comics. And there was a little box room like that, a little cupboard. I slept in that with no windows, no ventilation. That was 100 pounds a week. It was fine. Fine. It was tolerable.
Tolerable financially or tolerable psychologically and emotionally?
Both. Both! I quite liked being with the old road dogs because they were men who’ve been working in stand up-comedy for years who were never going to be in the running for the awards. They’re just doing it as a job. So they’re very pragmatic about it and the kind of hysteria that you get among the sort of more artist-comedian types, which is probably more my gang, naturally speaking, not to sound like an absolute wanker, but you know, yeah, I have friends who every year on the clock have a nervous breakdown about their shows because they want to do something important and meaningful and difficult and challenging and exciting and dynamic. And that’s a lot to ask of you. And if you are staying up to three o’clock every morning trying to network and then also drinking and then also eating a deep fried Mars bar instead of dinner. You get two weeks into the Fringe and you read a three-and-a-half star review and you just burst into tears and can’t stop.
So three-and-a-half stars is tears?
For some people, yeah.
As someone reviewing shows for my first Fringe, oh, that’s good to know. Now that I’ve already reviewed 30 shows — the ones that I gave three and a half stars? They’re not gonna enjoy those.
The thing about a three-star review, or I mean three-and-a-half is a sort of a kind of version of a three-star — the thing about a three-star review is nobody goes to a three-star show. No one goes, what do the reviews say? Three stars? That’s great. I’m gonna go see that. It just means it’s a show.
You don’t put it on the poster.
You didn’t put on the poster. It’s not a compliment. It’s not a compliment. It’s a, I guess a hearty pat on the back and like, well, you’ve done a job. You know? Two stars is you’ve done a bad job. And one star is I would like a refund, please. How dare you? You know. So in that spectrum of things, four and five stars are kind of, for the fragile comedians ego, the only acceptable number of stars. I don’t know if you’re going to review my show, I shouldn’t have said that.
Perhaps I should have talked to you the first day before I started reviewing shows. Although I guess it’s probably better as a critic to not know that before you start.
Yes. Yeah. Because then you’re honest. This is the other thing. Everyone has their own kind of — this is why the star thing is a problem, because everyone has their own idea of what stars mean. I’ve just told you what I think they mean when people give them to me. But you know, there can be people who are like, I never give more than three stars unless something’s extraordinary. You know, unless it’s like just mind blowingly good. Then I might give three and a half. You know, there’s some people who just have that bar set low. That’s a two star review.
(as sirens blare past us)
And that’s why you get at least four stars, because you can stay in the moment.
Look for me. I don’t know. I try not to read reviews unless they’re good during the festival. There’s a few people who I will read because I know their reviewing style. I know what they like. I’ve seen their work as reviewers over a number of years. So it means something. I know what they’re like, what they won’t like. I kind of have a measure of what they what their opinion means. And you know, they have their biases or not, and I’m kind of aware of those. So when I read a review that they’ve written, I have a sense of what the show will be like, or what they think of my show. But if it’s just anyone. If someone I’ve never heard of who’s written a review, then it’s just some cunt with an opinion.
That’s the Internet, though. At least in the old media process, a review had to go through a vetting process of editors and publishers.
Yeah. And now it’s just free reign. Especially even before that, you know, I have friends who are reviewers and they’d say, you know, they’d hand in a four-star and their editor would say, I’m sorry, I’ve got too many good reviews, you’ve got to hand in a bad review. So either you have to give that one fewer stars or review something negatively. There is an economics of that as well. I quite like reading bad reviews of acts who I love, because it reminds me that you don’t have to agree with them. All you want as a comedian is to make other people happy, right? And if you’re not, even if they are just some random person, you feel sad.
I have had one show so far during this Fringe that I was really looking forward to and then felt like I had to write a bad review. And then as I was writing it, I wrestled internally with, should I give this bloke the benefit of the doubt or?
Well, that’s a question! I like to give people the benefit of the doubt but sometimes also, you know you also as a reviewer, your duty is not just to the comedians to keep us happy. Your duty is to the audience members and whether they should be spending their money. I think the best reviews for audiences. It’s got nothing to do with the stars. It’s got to do with whether they can read the review and have a sense of whether they will like the show or not. Like reviewers like I said that I’m familiar with, like Steve Bennett of Chortle I’ve read his reviews for years. And it’s not that I think he’s a magnificent reviewer, but I know when he thinks something what that will mean to me. Sometimes I share his opinions on certain types of shows. And sometimes I know if he doesn’t like a show and he puts it in a particular way, I will like that show. That for me is a useful review. He doesn’t like that, but I can see he’s written it well enough, descriptively enough and exposed his biases enough that I know from his bad review, that that it will be a good show for me.
That’s how I felt as a child with film critics. (NOTE: I watched Siskel and Ebert most weeks, and also read The Hartford Courant, growing up)
Yeah. You’re like, oh, you know, he doesn’t like action films, I love action films.
Or sometimes if they hated it, I knew that I would love it.
Yeah, exactly. That’s a useful review.
With comedy. It’s even more subjective, though. Obviously. Your sense of humor differs. And so as a reviewer, especially 15 years after starting my website, I also wrestle with the notion that I’m writing for people who don’t think like me as well as those who do.
Yes, yeah. And can you give them a picture so that they know even if you don’t like it, they might.
So there are some very popular comedians not at the Fringe. But there are some very popular comedians who sell arenas. So I know that they have millions of fans, and then I don’t care for them, or I don’t think they’re even very talented. But I still have to write in a way that acknowledges that there’s something that people are responding to what is it?
If you can identify it, even if it’s not a thing.
And then that’s where critical thinking really comes in.
Well, apparently sort of legendarily, Jim Jeffries did an arena show in Melbourne. One of the papers sent their most feminist leftist writer to review it, which was generally seen as quite a dick move on the part of the paper. Of course, she was gonna give it one star and put a star and call it misogynistic trash. But it didn’t affect his ticket sales at all, because the people who read it could see where her bias was, and they’re like, oh, it’s, you know, horrible to women and horrible to ethnic minorities and all of that stuff. I’m gonna love it. Of course, Jim Jeffries is sort of currently wrestling with an audience issue, which is that he did a bit against guns in America. That made him briefly and virally a darling of the left. Which if you know his back catalogue is a little ironic. Not that he’s a right wing comedian. But he’s certainly an outrage merchant.
He definitely was when he was younger, I don’t know how much he still dabbles in that now.
He still dabbles in it. Yeah, he likes to he likes to get that reaction, likes to get a shock.
So does Bill Burr.
Yeah, so do so many comedians who are very talented, they like that edge between
Instead of having an audience love you, how do I make them hate me, and then still love me?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, push and pull. It’s a lot of fun. I’d be any, any comedian does that. I do that a little myself. You know,
Before you got into comedy, you studied the law. And you were telling me you worked in investment bank.
I was a lawyer.
You had another plan before comedy,
I didn’t have a plan, I don’t think, at all. I don’t think I had a plan for life. I think, yeah, I was a lawyer for a year and I worked in an investment bank as an intern in New York. And those were things that didn’t suit me.
So you grew up with Buddhism and then for a long period of your life, you dealt with your mother’s ailing health.
Yes, my mom was sick. She had MS.
How much did those two things impact your own career path?
It’s difficult to tell with Buddhism because obviously, the way that you kind of are taught, the metaphysics of the universe shapes everything, right? The idea that life is suffering and death is inevitable and there’s no point clinging to things or getting too caught up in things, I think, obviously that shapes the way that you approach stuff like money. But equally, you know, the combination of my grandmother being a Holocaust survivor, and my mom being sick, meant that I’ve never had a feeling that any future is guaranteed. I find it incredibly difficult to conceptualize the future. So when people say what are your ambitions? What are your plans? I have none, I mean, I sort of have an idea of what I might like to happen, but I can’t honestly believe in it. I can’t say that, you know, a week from now or a month from now, I’ll still have the use of my body or my brain. So I feel like whatever I do, it’s not like live for the moment. It’s not quite that, it’s something like whatever I do, the journey has to be worth it. The process, even if it’s difficult has to be nourishing. I don’t really believe in putting your life off until you’re retired, which you see a lot of people doing. I don’t really believe in torturing yourself for some future satisfaction. Which is not to say, I believe in being self-indulgent either. I think you should find this way of living that is you know, there’s a little eye to the future, but it needs to be interesting enough now. It needs to be satisfying enough now that if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, your last thought won’t be, aw shit.
So then it makes more sense to go into the creative arts.
Yes, yes. Because the process is fascinating. Yeah, I feel like if you put your eyes on the horizon, you can be heading in a particular direction career wise, but any way you fall along that path is good enough. You know?
You mentioned not putting things off but of course, the current show Chronos relies on a premise of, oh, I’ve put everything off, now what?
Yeah. Man. I love a deadline. That’s great. I don’t function without deadlines. I always spent my whole life thinking I was lazy. Then I did The Last Post in 2020.
That’s the complete opposite where you’re like, I’m going to do something every day.
It was a daily satirical news podcast set in an alternate dimension. That’s how I met Josh Gondelman, had him as a guest on it. And he was, I think, probably my favorite of the guests on it. And it turns out that while I can’t write a book, and I can’t you know, create a large thing on spec. What I can do is deliver every single day, 366 days of the year. I wrote 80 hours of comedy that year.
What was your process like? Were you meticulous about, at this time of the day, I’m going to get this done because I know I have to put it out?
So it was a little different because, although it went out every day, we recorded in batches, so we would record two times a week. And we would record four episodes with one host, one co host. But not Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So in terms of writing it was this real challenge because what we would be doing is writing this Monday, next Tuesday, the Thursday after that, and the Monday after that, for example. It would sort of be spreading out into the future which meant I had to have in my head sort of two or three weeks worth of planning in terms of the news arcs. So the news articles are vaguely linked with the real world but often quite abstracted, because I didn’t want to be doing the real world news because it was so depressing in 2020 and so repetitive, if you remember it was Brexit Trump and the pandemic that was it. Brexit Trump pandemic, Brexit Trump pandemic, and it was really difficult to make new and interesting jokes about that. So I thought I’ll do this alternate universe, but what that meant was sort of yes, making a year’s worth of news up and then making jokes about it. It was a lot of fun.
It’s got to be cathartic to have an outlet.
Yeah, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it very much.
Before you have this new outlet.
Yes. Having a little person is a whole different adventure.
Talk about the economics. You also mentioned that how important Patreon has been.
Yes, yeah, I say in my show that I couldn’t have afforded a baby if I didn’t have a Patreon. That’s the reality of it is that I particularly in the last two and a half years, stand-up income has been extremely irregular or non-existent. There’s been Zoom gigs and occasionally there’s been openings up and people have gone see shows, but you can’t guarantee it anymore. And so having this kind of online support network and a regular paycheck, gave me that stability. There’s nothing more to say about like, there’s nothing more elaborate or insightful that I have. Just, that’s a fact about life.
Had the either the pandemic or the baby happened five years earlier…
It might have been completely different. It would have been different. I might be a lawyer again by now.
There weren’t those subscription platforms to make money.
No. And the lovely thing about the Patreon for me, so I always have this problem or I kind of a wrestle with access. I don’t like having a paywall. I don’t like saying these people get something and these people don’t. Obviously people need to buy tickets. But I like to say if you can’t afford a ticket, just let me know. And we’ll figure out some kind of exchange or something because I don’t like the idea of closing people out. One of the things that I love the most about comedy when my dad asked me, why don’t you write an opera or why don’t you do the theater? Is that nobody thinks stand-up comedy is too fancy for them. There’s not a cultural barrier because it’s considered a low art form. You’re talking to everybody. And so if I want to do kind of high-flown ideas, I have to make them accessible to everybody. Anybody, someone who just walks in off the street, somebody who doesn’t have a secondary education, somebody who can’t read has to be able to find something funny in my show. And that is such a really lovely thing. But then with a Patreon I sort of have to figure out how much access to give to people. I have these weekly salons where people come and we just have a Zoom Room chat. And it was so good during the pandemic, just to talk to people all over the world, all different circumstances, all different socioeconomic backgrounds, all different races, all different genders, all different cultures. And just have this shared space. And I do three of them are for the whatever subscription access level, and the fourth one in every month is open access anyone can come, and I found that so like, I know it’s something that I offered to other people but it was so nice for me as well, because as a comedian you sometimes just don’t talk to anyone except other comedians.
True. You forget about the real world. You start talking about people as civilians. Yeah. I don’t know if it’s common in Australia. But these American comedians often refer to non comedians as civilians. Yeah, yeah. Which implies that
we’re in the trenches. A lot of the metaphors around comedy are quite violent and militaristic. Yeah, I died on stage or I bombed on stage or I killed. Yeah, it’s very aggressive. But yeah, yeah, there’s like a sheetmetal worker in Minnesota and an economics undergrad in Germany and a heavy metal guitarist in Sweden, and we all get to, and they’re my friends now because I talk to them once a week, which is more often than I thought to some of my other friends. I think it’s a really wonderful thing.
So talking about accessibility, I know that stand-up comedians sometimes look down on musical comedy because they feel like it’s too accessible.
Yes, it’s cheating somehow, which I think is ridiculous.
What’s your take on it since you do
I play the banjo occasionally, but I try not to do it too much.
Were there periods where you thought about being a banjo comedian?
There were periods where I thought about it. And periods where I was embarrassed to play the banjo. When I started out in Australia, it made a massive difference and I don’t know how much of that was just my own confidence and my stage presence, but as a young woman coming onstage, the reaction of the audience was often negative before you even hit the mic. It was like ‘Oh, who the fuck is this?’ There was a real sexism in Australia, about particularly young women doing comedy and if I came on with a banjo, it was confusing enough that you had the benefit of the doubt for 10 seconds, enough to get a few jokes up and prove yourself. So that was what it was originally, and then it sort of became a bit of a crutch and so now I sort of, I have it, but I try not to use it too much. But it is useful as a tool in terms of, this is going to sound very wanky. I try to create shows that have a shape that have an arc that have sort of ups and downs in energy and also, so if you think of a cube, right, you have your traditional empty cube. You have across from left to right, you have ups and downs. In the show, the narrative of ups and downs, which you if you’ve done any kind of English study, you probably know that that’s like the shape of a narrative is you start on a level and that’s the status quo and then you go up with excitement and then you go down. There’s some problem and then that left to right arc is there in a stand-up comedy show, I like to create those shapes, but there’s also energy levels in a show, where it’s kind of maybe let’s say that the line gets thicker or thinner, where you have like a song, it’s high energy, and then you have quiet moments that are low energy, but they might be quite intense. And so this is where the cube comes in. You also have close and far. So you’re either coming in right close to the audience, and giving them something really personal or you’re stepping back and doing something like broad about society or trends or politics or something global. And so with all of that’s like how I tend to think of a show, and a banjo lets you do something that’s high energy, but could also be like intimate or personal or vice versa, it could be high energy, but taking a big step back. It just gives you an extra tool in your kit to give that variety of texture that I like in a show.
Does that cube applied to podcasting as well?
Interesting.
The podcaster asks seven years into doing his podcast.
I think it applies more to scripted work than to improvised work and a lot of podcasting is at least partially improvised. That said, I do very written shows like The Last Post was very written. The Bugle is very written. The Gargle is that 50/50 written and sort of riffed.
The Audible series, it was probably all scripted.
All scripted. Yeah, the Audible series is probably better in terms of thinking of that kind of arc stuff. Yeah, basically, if if you have control over the length of the show, then yeah. I think with podcasting, particularly conversational podcasting, like this. You’re less of a cube and maybe more of a circle. You want to bring things back round. It was more weaving or more knitting or something. You’re trying to make it make sure everything sort of feels bedded down and sort of like it’s all on the same kind of, you can be talking about a bunch of different things, but you’re having the same conversation. And then that might be you know, oh, you mentioned this before and bringing that back, or a theme that you’ve noticed emerging, then you kind of peg that down. I think that’s more that’s more the way that podcasting works. I say to the man who’s been podcasting for.
That would require that I that have been listening.
Hahaha. That’s always the problem when you’re interviewing someone is the difference between listening and planning your next question. It’s tricky. It’s tricky to find that balance.
You mentioned not liking the economics of your Audible deal.
The economics were dreadful, but I had a wonderful time. It was such a privilege to do. I really enjoyed it. I like making documentaries. I was really interested in the subject. I worked with Ash Ranpura, who’s a doctor, neuroscientist and practicing neurologist, so real genius guy and we had great podcasting chemistry.
How did you end up doing that?
I was working with Chris Skinner, who’s the producer of The Bugle works for Something Else Studios, which used to be the biggest independent podcasting studio in the UK. They recently got eaten by Sony, which was one of the reasons why we didn’t renew The Last Post because they were only interested in big properties. But yeah, so he got me in contact with their documentary branch. And I was approached as a comedian amateur to do the original one that I did with Ash Ranpura which was on meditation, that there would be an expert in neuroscience and then they’d be Gumby, you know, somebody who knows nothing and who’s just there to be the Everyman. And I said, I think you maybe don’t want me for this. Because I was brought up meditating. I was brought up Buddhist. I don’t know anything about the neuroscience of it. I don’t know about the technical side of stuff. So, but I will be happy to talk about the experiential side and I couldn’t pretend not to know that stuff.
Not to be in wonder of it all.
Yeah, not to be like, Whoa, what’s this meditation business?!?! Breathing??? like, I couldn’t be that person, that would have felt disingenuous. So I said that you might not want me. I can recommend some other people and they said actually, no, that might be an interesting dynamic, having you be essentially the earthly one and him be the brainy one.
So it was only a deal for one to start. And then the audience responded in kind.
Yes, they loved it. We got so much traction and a lot of downloads. And then yeah, we did after that. We did the habit change one, which was very, very, very successful, and one on wellness. And yeah, we just did a couple of these documentaries. And it was really delightful. And then the pandemic hit, and I’m hoping we can do another one because it was a lot of fun.
You just need a new contract.
Yes, I just need a new contract. It was not well paid. Is the thing and this is one of the problem with these streaming services because they are very quiet about how well you’re doing.
Was that the case with Amazon?
Amazon? Absolutely. I don’t know how well my stand-up special did on Amazon at all. I don’t know if one person’s watched it or if over 1,000 people have watched it. I get a lot of emails from people who’ve watched it, but maybe every single person who’s watched it has emailed me. I don’t know. I feel like it’s done well, because a couple of hundred people have emailed me. There was a while there when it launched where I was getting two or three emails a day from people and I assume that means more than that were watching. Yeah, they haven’t told me. The first Amazon special I did, or I did a special that was then bought by Amazon. And that was bought for 500 pounds. And then the second Amazon special that I did. I don’t know if I’ve signed an NDA, but it was like significantly more than that. And it’s funny because the first one I sold was The Resistance which was the sequel to the second one I sold which was Savage so in many ways like this the first one I sold for much less, it should have been better.
Well, Savage came through as part of a package deal, though.
There’s some behind the curtain stuff there that was a little bit funny. In that I was recommended to Amazon by Neil Gaiman, who had just finished Good Omens and was kind of their darling boy. And he listened to my trilogy podcast, which is Savage, The Resistance, Empire, three hours of stand-up back to back, it’s all telling one story. He listened to it and he called me out of the blue and said, ‘Hey, do you mind if I put you forward to Amazon?’ And I was like, Yeah, I really mind. Don’t do that. And then so then the package deal came through that they were going to do 10 Australian comedians to do stand-up specials. But the production company was also a management company, and I was the only person out of those 10 who was not in their stable. So I was a little bit the outsider. And yeah, it was sort of a little bit awkward, I think, because I don’t think had they had their druthers they would have chosen me. I think Amazon came to them saying, Oh, and one of your people needs to be Alice Fraser which is simultaneously a great privilege and slightly awkward moment.
You started talking about the importance of talking about the business side of comedy so comedians can work together. And yet sometimes the management or the agencies will work together but only for people who are on their team.
Yes, absolutely. One of the best things about being with a quote unquote good agent, is that they’ll say oh, you can have Michael McIntyre if you take Joe Blogs. That happens all of the time, you know, a big television company doesn’t want to take risks. They want known acts and known names. But the reality is that you don’t become known unless television takes a chance on you. And the only reason that television takes a chance on you is if there’s a guaranteed outcome for them, which means you know, you get Jerry Seinfeld if you take this other person.
That happens all the time in the states too. Are there certain people on Netflix, who I am sure are only on Netflix because
they’re with a management company that has leverage.
Or a comedian said as part of my deal. I want you to give this other convenient an hour. But I’m not sure. Well, I have no idea how the platforms are perceived in the UK or Australia. Is there a very dominant or preferred platform for comedians in Australia or the UK?
(Her daughter, “Laser” Fraser grabbed my microphone and played with it here)
I think anything was name recognition really. In the same way as everywhere else people want to be on television. Even though no one watches television anymore. Success online, despite being objectively more successful is somehow not given the same credit because you haven’t been passed through a series of gatekeepers.
So it can be the same here as it is there, in terms of on the one hand, you can bemoan the state of comedy on Netflix. But if Netflix calls you up and offers you the deal, you’re going to say yes right away, without questioning it.
Yeah, I think so. Almost certainly. I mean, I always read contracts, but that’s because I used to be a lawyer.
So to bring this all home. How has having Laser Fraser changed the economics?
So first of all, the moment I started making enough money on the Patreon to cover my rent, I found out which gigs I hated doing. You say yes to many fewer things. And also, you know a lot of getting successful as a comedian. This is the brutal truth. A lot of getting successful as a comedian means doing non economically viable shows, paying more than you are making to get to a show. They’re paying you whatever it is 150 pounds and you’re paying 100 pounds train ticket and 45 pounds in accommodation costs or whatever it is, or you’re sleeping in the train station so you do make a profit. Or you’re trying to make sure that you can stay on someone’s couch or you’re saying yes to saying on someone’s creepy couch, because otherwise you don’t make any profit. And that’s the calculus of being a young comedian trying to make it that you are doing things that are
And that’s not even taking the gender into account.
Yeah, that’s not even taking into account gender politics, which is whether you can say yes to sleeping on that couch, whether you can sleep in the station that night. Whether you can wait until the night bus till four o’clock in the morning and deal with all of the drunk fuckheads to get home, to have done 10 minutes at a moderately successful club so they might pass you for no money. That’s the reality of it. I’m lucky enough to be established enough in my career that I don’t have to say yes to those gigs anymore. But, you know, I always thought when I was doing those gigs, that it was important to push back. For the next woman coming along. You know, there was a gig that I did once in Australia in rural Australia where I think I was the first woman they’d ever booked. And they said, Oh, you drive out to the gig and do a lineup show and then we put you up, and we got there and the accommodation was bunk beds in a shared room with the other three comedians. And I thought, OK, I don’t know these guys. I’ve known them for eight hours, for the eight hour drive. That’s how familiar I am with them. I don’t really want to sleep in a room with them. I could. I don’t want to cause a fuss. What about the next woman that comes along? And so I said, I’m sorry, I’m not comfortable sleeping in a room with three strange men and they did that thing where they’re like, Oh, yeah. Oh, well, I mean, you could sleep on the producers couch? And I thought I could do that. I could do that. That’d be weird. I probably wouldn’t sleep very well, because I don’t know the producer very well. And then I thought what about the next woman coming along? And I said, No, that’s not OK, either. And they said, Well, I guess we could get you a hotel room, but that’ll eat into our profits. I said, OK. There’s so much of me. Like that sounds like not a big deal. But there was so much of me that was like, Oh, don’t be a fuss, don’t cause trouble, although never book you again. Oh, you’re being a diva. Oh, you’re making you’re making trouble. You need to be as nice as possible and as easy as possible and don’t get a reputation for being difficult. And then the only way that I fought that was by thinking of the next woman who might not be able to stand up for herself, who might not have you know, I for all of I’ve never asked for money from my parents, but I’ve always known I can go back to their house and stay. That’s a great privilege, that not everyone has. I get to say no to gigs that make me feel uncomfortable, which I think gives me a responsibility to stand up for the next woman. And to answer your question in this very, very long winded way. Now the next woman is sitting on my hip. You know, I feel obliged to say no to shitty gigs. I can’t take that gig that means I have to sleep in the train station, because we need a place to stay for the night, because I need to be able to put her down to bed somewhere safe, you know with a family member, and then be back to feed her within three and a half hours. So that changes the way that I approach the gigs I say yes to. It has to be worth it.
Thank you for saying yes to this gig.
Oh, it’s my absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming.
I look forward to asking Laser in 20 years about all the doors you’ve opened for her.
Ah yes. Nepotism.
From The Comic's Comic 
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