We have been running about the Edinburgh Festival Fringe catching shows and catching up with Funny Women alumni. We recently had a chat with Funny Women Awards 2012 finalist Abi Tedder who is starring in Minor Delays, a sketch show that promises sulky sketches and awkward moments from Abi and her fellow sketch performers Harry Michell and Joe Barnes…
Funny Women: Hi Abi, What have you been up to since you were a finalist in our 2012 Funny Women Awards?
Abi Tedder: Wow it doesn’t seem that long ago! Since then I have moved to London; I took my one-woman show ‘Anything But’ up to the fringe, have done a bit of serious theatre, continued to tout my comedy wares around and about and reluctantly been forced to get proper normal jobs to allow me to eat and such.
FW: Tell us about Minor Delays, the show promises sulky sketches, what's a sulky sketch?
AT: Minor Delays is a sketch show starring Harry Michell (ex-President of the Cambridge Footlights), myself and Joe Barnes (ex-President of the Leeds Tealights). We met through our sketch-comedy backgrounds and found that we all shared a passion not only for all things sketch, but for acting and for theatre as well. We all prefer real characters in real situations (meaning the show lacks the normal quota of funny wigs and enormous props.) It’s about the awkward moments when people are paralysed by social convention, those awkward funny moments of silence when people’s minds are racing but nobody moves. It’s quiet sometimes, sulky sometimes, but hopefully more than anything – very funny. That’s the bloody plan anyhow!
FW: You're performing in Edinburgh this year, what's your top tip for surviving the Edinburgh Fringe?
AT: Pace yourself – don’t try and see ten shows a day – that’s too much show damnit!
When I did my show ‘Anything But’ my venue was a dolled-up shipping container in a car park. Its corrugated metal walls created what was essentially a big human comedy oven. Don’t therefore choose a long sleeve thick woolly jumper as your costume. Don’t do that.
FW: You told us in 2012 that your choice of a career in comedy made people "uncertain, uncomfortable and cynical in equal measures", are they more certain, comfortable and less cynical now?
AT: Nope – but as I age and my desperate need for approval from strangers simply hasn’t waned I think they have resigned themselves to it. I think my family would feel slightly more comfortable if I had become a lawyer or a doctor or something, but then again they know me and they know that I’d be the worst lawyer or doctor imaginable.
FW: Who are your favourite women comedians at the moment?
AT: At the moment? Hmm Claudia O’Doherty always fascinates me and I saw Lucy Beaumont recently and thought she was marvellous.
You can see Minor Delays at the Gilded Balloon until Monday 25th August. For more information click here!
