The rise of the funny girls

In her comedy show An Ungrateful Woman, Bridget Christie makes the following observation. “In advertisements, there are just two types of women: wanton, gagging for it; or vacuous. We’re either coming on a windowpane, or laughing at salads.”

It’s smart, sharp and sadly true and I thought about the need for more varied public images of women when I was walking around the Edinburgh Festival, where female comedians are finally on the march. True they only account for 183 out of 1,086 comedy acts – or 17 per cent – but this is a whopping 62 per cent rise on last year. For the first time I can remember, if you want to see a woman being funny, you are spoilt for choice.

The women I picked to watch were led by Christie, whose new hour of stand-up is even funnier than A Bic For Her, the show that won her last year’s Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award. Christie in her pomp is a brilliant comic, managing to combine deeply serious political campaigning (most notably about the horrors of female genital mutilation) and an overtly impassioned agenda about the treatment of women, with observations of the purest joy. An audience mixed both in gender and age, is simultaneously reduced to helpless laughter and politically engaged. It is quite a balancing act.

This new wave of female stand-ups appeal well beyond their gender. There’s no sense that this is one for the girls. Indeed Felicity Ward spends as much time musing on the politics of her Australian homeland as on the war between the sexes. Her observations about cricket fans who wear watermelon hats – “in the gallant war against evolution they are fighting every day” – cut both ways.

On the other hand, it is also true that these women have found their voice by focusing – just as male comedians do – on the subjects closest to their hearts. Relationships loom large. Sara Pascoe’s new show, Sara Pascoe vs History propelled her onto this year’s Foster’s shortlist. She begins by explaining she has bought herself a pair of glasses for her birthday – “and so my observational comedy has improved” – before coming up with a great line about the nominative determinative: “If your homing pigeon doesn’t come home, what you’ve lost is a pigeon.”

Then she hits her theme: the research that indicates female attitudes to sex are the same as men’s – they too are trying their best to propagate the species. She winds this into a discursive chat about Adam and Eve, Hitler and Eva Braun and a controversial defence of Blurred Lines in a really assured set.

Luisa Omielan shares this same confidence, with an act that is part confessional, part inspirational and always very truthful. The timings meant I couldn’t see her new show Am I Right Ladies? which has won much praise, so I went along to a performance of last year’s hit What Would Beyoncé Do? What’s different about Omielan is her warmth – “we’re here to have a good, f------ time” – and her ability to touch the lives of her fans with her chat about body shape, failed romance and suicide attempts. I love the confidence that sees her dancing along to her heroine and welcoming in the audience.

It’s exactly that verve and assurance, in all its varying forms, that so cheered me. Girls are on the rise – and they know it. Instead of worrying about being shut out by a blokey culture, they are taking it on and making it their own. They don’t conform to any stereotypes. And that injection of new material and different voices can only be a good thing, whether you are a woman or a man. It is simply a shot in the arm for comedy as a whole.

Bridget Christie is on tour from Sept 10; bridgetchristie.co.uk. Felicity Ward is at Greenwich Comedy Festival on Sept 26. Sara Pascoe is on tour from Oct 24; sarapascoe.com. Luisa Omielan is at Soho Theatre from Sept 23-Oct 4 and at Leicester Square Theatre on Nov 21 and 22; iloveluisa.com

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