When I tell men I work for Funny Women I often get the old, ‘Are women funny?’ question. When I tell them, ‘Yes’ they respond, ‘Yeah but I bet they’re all fat’.
It always fascinates me that men think a woman can only be funny when they’re fat and that all slim women are seductive, miserable, self-centred, dramatic bitches whose only idea of a joke is eating after six o’clock. And yet our ladies with more to love are seen as happy, jolly, beer-drinkers. Personally I know a lot of skinny women who are the second description and vice versa .
In fact there are plenty of slim hilarious women in comedy who have graced our screens: Joanna Lumley, Sarah Silverman, Lucy Porter, Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, Barbara Windsor – the list could go on and yet some still seem to stuck with an idea of what a female comedian should look like. It makes me wonder, as someone who aspires to have a career in comedy, do you have to be fat to be funny?
I recently read that the wonderful Dawn French had lost six and a half stone and is now described as ‘the smaller of the two’ of French and Saunders. Although very impressive, it makes you wonder whether the years of stating the ‘fat and happy’ line might have been a little white lie. And as a lot of her material was based around her size, it makes you wonder if she will be the same Dawn French we have grown to love.
Roseanne Barr also used her fat image as her comic identity for most of her career, stating ‘I proved you could be fat and funny and sexy’. And so did John Goodman. It was a ‘hot duo.’ However just like her career partner, she underwent extreme weight loss, taking her from a staggering 26st to just over 12st. Needless to say she never did emulate the same success in her sitcom as in her larger days.
So you’re probably thinking that I believe these comedians should have kept their fatter identities. Well actually, I don’t. If you’re a good comedian then you can change your act to suit the observations and changes in your life – I mean isn’t that what a stand-up comedian is about? Jamie Masada, owner of Sunset Boulevard’s famous Laugh Factory, claims, ‘a heavy person who used his or her weight as a topic of humour can either ditch weight from the act or comment on how the loss of the weight had an impact’.
I totally agree with the ditch part, and am tired of hearing the same fat jokes over and over again. As with the way other comics may rely heavily on the race card, the orientation card, the gender card, it becomes boring and a good comedian will develop past it. For example, when Jo Brand first started, I understood why the bulk of her material was about her weight. However, now that she is a well-established comedian, why does she still need to rely on this topic? Even she has said, ‘it’s almost a thing that I can’t stop because I’ve been doing it for so long’.
However, this hasn’t gone unnoticed. As one anonymous user on a comedy forum after ‘Show me the Funny’ stated so articulately, ‘she’s been doing those jokes for 20 years and more – but now see her on a shit show presented by a f-wit who was in nappies when she was shunting this shite around and now she’s just doing her bit for recycling’.
In my opinion being fat does not makes you funny. Being funny makes you funny. No amount of 99p chocolate doughnuts from Morrisons is going to give you a comic edge – maybe diabetes, but not comedy. So when it comes to Dawn French and whether it was her fat that made her funny or her skills, her new show will be aired on BBC Two later this year and I guess we will see if her larger frame was the source of all her powers…
Niki Durham
