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FUNNYGIRLS FIGHT FOR FAME

Funnygirls are finding it tough to break into television, writes Ollie Wilson.

COMEDIENNES are in short supply on television. Yet many women would love to have careers in comedy - and say it can be a real battle to overcome the prejudices of men.

Why should it be so hard? And what obstacles are placed in their way? Leading stand-up Hattie Hayridge, who found television stardom as the computer Holly in hit BBC sitcom Red Dwarf, believes "New Laddism" is making life harder for comediennes.

"It's extremely difficult for women to get their own stand-up show. Jo Brand's really the only one who's managed it," says Hayridge. "Television producers don't trust women to do stand-up. They always assume that the material will only appeal to women, and worry about alienating their male viewers."

And many talented comediennes never make it through the club circuit, she says, because male audience members find women performers hard to accept.
"It is important to dress the right way - quirky, rather than sexy," she says, "because blokes can't fancy you and laugh at the same time."

Up-and-coming comic Angie McEvoy, 33, believes the media is all too eager to put down women stand-ups.

"A woman journalist from the Independent newspaper went to the Edinburgh Fringe last year and wrote a long article saying there were no funny women," says McEvoy. "If she'd looked on the London circuit, she would have found loads."

But she reckons the men make in and out of the television world make it an uphill struggle for women to succeed in comedy.

"You have to be a really attractive woman to stand a chance of getting on Channel 4's 11 O'Clock Show," she says. "If you're a man, it is fine for you to look gawky."

And McEvoy says that often producers cast a male stand-up with a female model, disc jockey or presenter - as has happened with "young comedy buck" Chris Addison and former nude model Gail Porter in dotcomedy, also on Channel 4.

Hayridge says that in the late-1980s, there appeared to be more interest among television executives in women stand-up comics, smoothing the way to her TV break in Friday Night Live, which quickly led to the role in Red Dwarf.

"But I think that now the main way into television for women comics is through sketch shows," she says.

"Even then, you often find that the men involved want to write everything and prefer using an actress who has less 'attitude' than a woman comic."

Comedian Fiona Allen broke into television within six months of coming to London. But she admits that it was her acting skills that paved the way.

Despite quickly picking up paid work on the London comedy circuit, it was auditioning for a 1993 drink-drive commercial, in which she emerged from a car crash as zombie, that got her noticed.

Now she is better known as a TV comedienne - starring with Sally Phillips and Doon MacKichan in Channel 4's girlie sketch show Smack The Pony - than as a stand-up.

She admits she has only done 100 gigs - fewer than many new acts would do in their first year on the circuit, and is looking for a comedy writing partner, before going a tour of stand-up dates.

In many ways, the comedy circuit is a bear pit, where everyone male or female takes their chances with fickle audiences and tough promoters.

But comediennes insist that, at least as far as the comedy-going public is concerned, the pitch is slopped against them.

The rising comic Susan Murray - formerly known as Harpie - says: "I think it's harder for women comics because we have the reputation of not being funny.

"I had a man come up to me at a club and say: 'You're the only woman who's ever made me laugh.' I felt like saying, 'Yeah, my boyfriend writes my gags'."

Murray, 31, dropped 'Harpie' as a stage name because she did not want men to take it at the literal meaning of 'rapacious woman'.

But she says she still comes up against "large groups of firemen" in audiences "who insist on muttering" through women acts.

"Of course, there are a few women comics who aren't funny," she concedes, "but there are also hundreds of unfunny male ones."

One aspect of stand-up comedy that makes it unique from all other forms of performance - theatre, dance, music, mime or whatever - is the verbal abuse that some audience members feel entitled to hurl at the performers.

When it comes to women comics, the rules of chivalry certainly do not apply.

Hattie Hayridge recalls being on the receiving end of the heckle, "Show us your c***!", while, more recently, Angie McEvoy was greeted with, "Hello, pussy!" by a man in the audience, to which she responded: "Hello, c***!"

Perhaps the problems that women stand-ups face on stage and in getting onto television are an extension of the war of the sexes. It can be as big a struggle to make men laugh as to get them to behave themselves.

The key to being a successful comic of either sex is getting the entire audience - men and women - to laugh. The majority of successful female stand-ups do just that - and deserve a bigger slice of the television cake.