“I thought: I’m nearly 30 and I’m a failed actress who’s waitressing”.
Zoe Lyons’ rise up the comedy food chain appears rapid: annual awards since her comedy career began would testify to that – but it’s only in the last year that life has become comfortable for the bemuscled Brighton resident.
Turning 40 this year, Zoe Lyons is staring at her tin anniversary in stand-up. Behind her are the lights of Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, a Mock of the Week double and the 2008 Dave TV award for the best joke of the Edinburgh festival which brought national recognition; and rubbed Germaine Greer up the wrong way.
In front is her 2011 tour Clownbusting – a gruelling six months on domestic roads before time out in Australia for the Melbourne Comedy Festival – showcasing her lauded observational wit and insightful dissemination of life’s what ifs.
Lyons admits that nerves are jangling ahead of this, her second tour, but it’s some distance from those lengthy formative years on the road.
Daughter of a northern mum, Irish dad and an upbringing in Ireland and my own native Glasgow offers a handy shield to deflect crowd apathy and garner support in whatever corner of the isles she lands; notably with a home Dublin crowd – and 4.5m viewers – on the BBC’s Michael McIntyre Comedy Roadshow and appearances on pseudo-improv show Mock the Week.
“It (Mock the Week) is nearly three hours of record. I’ve watched that show and watched people who’ve genuinely lost the will to live half way through; you can see them on the panel. I watched it before I did it and thought I must at least remember to still look interested in what’s going on. My face hurt at the end of one of the recordings I gurned so much.
“It’s a very difficult show to do – it’s absolutely quite gladiatorial in its approach but it doesn’t really apologise for it: it is what it is. As a guest on that show you’re given very little opportunity. I’m overly polite at times and not the most competitive of people and it’s highly competitive.”
Despite the pre-tour nerves, its obvious that Lyons is strangely more at home on the road. The mix of crowds and venues and the opportunity to verbalise and reconnect her multi-faceted identities reflect those early nomadic years. This formula resonates more than that of panel shows.
That confidence to build instant rapport and respond to the audiences’ endorphins on a solo stand-up show in a hidden British corner was – despite early drama school training – a crucial weapon missing from the arsenal of Zoe Lyons: the waitress and stand-up.
A psychology graduate from York University, Lyons’ mixed identity was further cultivated during a year working in Australia’s banana plantations. She returned home, vigour poised, vowing for a career on stage and attended The Poor School, a drama academy in North London, and was the year ahead of EastEnders’ Jesse Wallace.
“I harboured this idea of being an actress for years but I never got an agent; I never did anything spectacular – I did a few alright fringe shows but nothing spectacular.
“There weren’t many who made it from my drama school but a couple did. It was probably four years of waitressing and trying to get acting parts.”
“I was 30 before I did my first gig. I thought ‘I’m nearly 30, I’m a failed actress who’s waitressing’ – and this was not how I envisioned my life would pan out. So I started the comedy and it went alright so I just ploughed everything into it. I was quite glad actually to be a bit of a loser that had nothing to fall back on – if I’d had a well paid job I wouldn’t have the impetus to keep going.
Her first gig was at the long-running comedy newcomers’ night at The Kings Head in Crouch End where as many as 15 frightened newbies splurge their carefully crafted lines. Lyons’ own very hastily assembled gags enthused a disproportionate audience of her pals; culminating in a confidence which facilitated gigs #2 – 11.
“It was probably 12 gigs in before I died on my arse horrifically.” She admits.
The name Zoe Lyons first hit my own desk when I was working in Edinburgh and reviewing a lot of Fringe shows. Her one-liner about Amy Winehouse self-harming (chances are you’ve heard it) landed her an obscene amount of coverage.
“I’d paid for PR that Edinburgh as well – I paid a lot of money and nothing could have bought me the amount of PR that joke did.”
“I did have quite a few self harmers typing away on their typewriters at me. I got quite a few angry emails and you’re obviously doing something right if you get a few angry emails.”
Her joke evoked wrath in feminist Germaine Greer who chastised Lyons ‘astonishingly vicious’ attack on a woman.
“She described me in the same sentence as Joan Rivers so I’m taking it as a massive compliment.”
“She (Winehouse) was in the press a lot, she really annoyed me; it was a joke about a popular culture figure – that’s all it was.
“It’s a bit sad that as a feminist you see women as so weak they can’t take a joke.”
As a gay woman whose most noted joke is an attack on a female pop icon – and now at least in these quarters, a fantastically witty retort to a Germaine Greer rebuke – Lyons admits that stereotype would see her more onside as some sort of angry man-hater; but she’s just so hard to place.
Tattoos, muscles and a rasping voice wrap a schizophrenic sense of identity which has been constructed all over the show. The package should, in all honesty, lend itself to derision and divisiveness – not belie someone who brings the audience together on her terms.
The former would be too easy and Zoe Lyons has travelled this road the hard way.
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