Jokes, Jokes, Jokes

‘JOKES, JOKES, JOKES’ is Eclair’s account of how she elbowed her way into the male dominated world of 1980’s stand-up, via drama school, cider, sausage rolls, sleeping with men who looked like they lived under a carpet, punk poetry, anorexia, bedsit misery, waitressing and not really having a clue about anything. This is about years spent getting changed next to a deep fat fryer in rooms above pubs, and audiences expecting ‘a song’ or at least ‘some impressions’.

This is about a world before microphones, before mobile phones, before everyone gave up smoking and before everyone started taking coke. Eclair was on the comedy circuit before there really was a comedy circuit. Still gigging forty years later, this is a snap shot of a ‘once upon a time time’, from Lancashire by way of Manchester before it became Madchester, when the canals still stank and the entire population was nicotine stained, to London, where Covent Garden was still a market and before then, when little Jenny Hargreaves, daughter of Major Derek Hargreaves (spy) and June Hargreaves (spy’s wife) sister of Sara (born to be head girl) and Ben (of very little interest).

Jokes, Jokes, jokes, charts the changing face of women in comedy since the very early 80’s.

Author Biography

Stand-up comedian Jenny Eclair was the first woman to win the Perrier Award – the UK’s top comedy award – in 1995. Since then, she has also found fame as the author of six critically acclaimed novels and one non-fiction book. Her latest, Older and Wider, combines Jenny’s quintessential wry humour whilst covering the almost taboo topic of menopause. Jenny serves as a wise – but always witty – guide to others on the experience of menopause.

Jenny is currently touring the UK with SIXTY! (Ffs). This tour serves as a timely sequel to her previous stand-up show How to be a Middle-Aged Woman (without going insane), that sold out in venues across the UK – and as far afield as Australia! Her biggest theatrical hit to date has been co-writing (with Judith Holder) and starring in all three Grumpy Old Women Live shows, both in the UK and Australia.

She is the writer of the popular BBC Radio 4 series of monologues, Little Lifetimes. Jenny also co-hosts the Menopausal-friendly podcast, Older and Wider, with Judith Holder and has many TV and radio credits to her name.

Small screen highlights include all the Grumpy Old Women series, The Apprentice: You’re Fired!, Room 101 (BBC), Loose Women (ITV), Alan Davies As Yet Untitled, QI (UKTV), plus of course reality TV shows such as Splash (ITV) and I’m a Celebrity (ITV) in 2010, where she came third.