The other act in the middle section was Boltonian Sophie Willan, who impressed me when she won the Magners New Act Award in Greenwich last month and impressed me again here. This time she did some completely different material about her eccentric family, homing in on her elderly relatives, which just goes to show that Willan has some fabulous hinterland to draw upon for comic inspiration.
And as well as having the material, boy can she talk. And she has funny bones. I’m not sure why she hasn’t broken through already. Maybe she lacks discipline – she does confess to being a naughty child at school – she once turned up for lessons in a bikini – but she has massive mainstream appeal, managing to bridge the gap between old school and alternative like that other comic from her neck of the woods, Peter Kay.
After another interval and more entertaining chat from Calman, the headliner was Jo Enright. The seasoned Birmingham comic is now Sheffield-based and finally getting some decent TV exposure as the gloomy jobsworth in the dole office ITV sitcom The Job Lot (it’s on ITV2 now, but worth hunting down).
Enright’s real skill is voices and characters. She can do worn-down Brummies at the drop of a hat and breezes through accents and expressions evoking little scenarios and sketches with impeccable skill. There were strong jokes too. She had a great routine about growing up in a Midlands suburb full of pound shops and charity shops where the stock was virtually interchangeable.
It was a mark of this pocket-sized comic’s huge experience that she wasn’t knocked off her stride when she tackled some Americans who were chatting in the audience - their English friend was explaining what Enright's reference to soldiers dipped in boiled eggs meant, which seemed fair enough. Enright bounced back with an ad lib about American soldiers, and when they said they were from the southern States she wondered aloud if the gig had taken a detour into Mississippi Burning. No chance of that though with such a smart performer keeping things on track.
It is often said by detractors that women only make jokes about periods. And, as it happened, Enright ended with a story about sanitary towels, but it didn’t really feel cliched because it was so well-observed, with Enright’s mime of old school “ipads” riding up as you walked along prompting howls of recognition from older women and howls of laughter from young women and men too. A fine end to a fine Festival start.
More info on the Women in Comedy Festival here.
