I'm not normally into couples...
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| Stewbridge |
"Brangelina" never passed my lips (either set), nor did "Posh and Becks" ever push my buttons -- and not for want of trying on their parts, I can assure you. Oh yes. But threesomes have never really been my thing. Call me old-fashioned.
But then I met (in print)
Stewart Lee and
Bridget Christie -- or "Stewbridge", as they might be called if they were A-list actors, sportspeople or singing fashion designers, rather than alternative Aish-list comedian writers -- and all that changed...
Unfortunately, Stewbridge is quite exclusive and reclusive, not even appearing as a twosome in public; the above photo-shopped image being the closest they get to public coupledom, which is a shame -- for me -- and for US, as I really think we could have had some wholesome threesome fun, us being comedians and all.
Still, it was kind of like we were all three together getting off on each other's wits, instead of tits, when I read recently (better late than never) their comedy memoirs back to back and laughed loud --especially with Bridget. They are yet to read my funny memoir, but it's only a matter of time. I am not going anywhere.
I had previously met Bridget, watching her Netflix special "Stand Up for Her" in 2017 -- the first comedy Netflix special by a British woman -- and blogging about it
here. But Stew is new to me, though he's been on the Brit comedy scene much longer than Bridget and in his book talks favourably about his time spent in New Zealand performing at the Auckland comedy club I started out (and stopped abruptly in, with a sex and age discrimination complaint pending) doing stand-up. I will not hold that against him. His book is otherwise brilliant.
But it is Bridget's
A Book For Her that shows us, like no other comedian has done, I think, what a genuine feminist laughs like, mingling substantive feminist insights and politics into a properly funny narrative and comedic life. Stew is a lucky man.
And I am a lucky woman to have found such a kindred comic spirit at a time when the women in my local community of new and pro comedians, most of whom call themselves feminists, have expressed their opposition to my discrimination complaint with an aggression and condescension far outstripping that expressed by the men in that community. Interestingly, Bridget says her fiercest public critics have been women.
Being a funny feminist is not for the fainthearted, indeed, but Bridget shows us that it can, and must, be done. And it will be.
“There is something unique
about the social determination to keep women from being publicly funny.
The persistence of all-male comedy panels, the comperes who introduce
female comedians as if they’re something between a freak show and
a child’s tap dance... this is distinct from what a female scientist might
experience. Standup is an act of profound self-exposure, and laughter is
the ultimate gesture of acceptance: I think it’s actually easier for
society to concede that a woman might be good at physics than it is to
countenance the sight of her being unguarded and shameless, and to
approve of that.”
Zoe Williams, July 20, 2015
Guardian
review of Bridget Christie’s A Book for
Her
