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IT’S very hard not to warm to Katy Brand. The 38-year-old comedian effuses warmth and good humour, even when she’s the butt of her own joke. And her new show I Was A Teenage Christian certainly makes Brand that — she’s performing for the first time in Ireland at the Vodafone Comedy Carnival next week with material that any of us who might have been caught up in the maelstrom of Catholicism will identify with.
‘I have never actually done a show in Ireland,’ Katy says. ‘I wish I had that opportunity but I was never invited before until now. I am delighted to be coming with this show and I’m looking forward to spending the weekend in Galway.’
Growing up in Hertfordshire, Katy began her religious life as an outsider. She was a lone Protestant in a Catholic school where she always seemed to be left out — but was too young to understand why.
‘I wasn’t allowed to do First Communion and Confirmation classes. I asked to be an altar boy and I was told all the reasons why I couldn’t be one. So I always had a sense of not quite being part of it.’
After making the transition to secondary school, things changed dramatically for Katy when a holiday with some friends opened some new doors for her.
‘When I left my first school there was nothing religious in my life at all until I went on holidays with a family friend. She had recently joined this Evangelical happy clappy church close to where we lived.
‘She invited me to go along with her one Sunday and I pretty much had a spiritual experience that night. I instantly fell in love with the church band leader in the way only a 13-year-old can. And that was it really.’
Religion became everything to Katy but although she threw herself into the spiritual life, there were certain times where she still felt excluded, and not without reason.
‘For the next seven years the church was my entire life. I went to church about four or five times a week. I preached at school, I preached in the pub where I worked, I preached in the local shopping centre. It completely overwhelmed me and I was so desperate to be in the inner circle of it all. But unfortunately the vicar didn’t like me and I had a difficult relationship throughout.’
You have to wonder about how someone could effectively spread the word of God while serving pints in a local pub.
‘Not very effectively is the answer,’ Katy bubbles with laughter. ‘ I would just try and engage people in chat. The Evangelical Charismatic church is just very good at teaching you ways of trying to identify people who might be feeling a bit down or a bit vulnerable, a bit quiet or a bit lonely.
‘They really embolden you and encourage you to strike up conversations and just try and get someone to come along to a church meeting with you. So if someone was drinking on their own or they were looking a bit down or like they had the weight of the world on their shoulders, you can strike up a conversation over the bar with the hope of getting them along to a church meeting and saving another soul.’
AGAIN, approaching lonely older men in pubs sounds like a precarious pastime for a teenage girl — but Katy admits at the time she saw no danger in it.
‘I am sure I have given many a lonely middle aged man the wrong idea and they were bitterly disappointed that my very friendly, chatty demeanour turned out to be just involving a visit to church,’ she explains. ’It didn’t really cross my mind at the time. I was a bit innocent and very into Jesus.’
But as Katy grew older she found there were things about the church that didn’t sit comfortably with her. And the more questions she asked, the more brick walls she hit and the more senior members of her church felt the need to exclude her and stop her doing what she loved.
Speaking of her gradual departure, Katy says: ‘I think it was a number of things — I started studying religion at school. I did RE at GCSE and A level and even though it wasn’t massively sophisticated stuff, it still gave me lots of questions. My church didn’t really like me asking questions. I think they felt it was a bit of a waste of time.’
As Brand’s academic career progressed, questioning her faith became the norm and she decided to study Theology at Oxford in the hope of finding some of the answers she needed.
But the answers she got were not necessarily ones that sat well with her church elders.
‘A few things happened — I was learning more and my theology classes were places where I was allowed to ask questions and discuss everything with my tutors. In my own church I found myself becoming more and more isolated — I was even dropped from the choir so that really upset me as it meant I couldn’t be near my one true love, the choirmaster.
‘And I just began to realise things were not as I had previously seen them.’
BUT one of the final straws for Katy was when her church took a dislike to one certain boy wizard as being a member of the occult. ‘One of the turning points for me was when my church banned Harry Potter books. I just thought it was ridiculous.’
Theology studies completed, Katy headed out into the world where she began working in TV production before taking the plunge into stand up comedy.
She had her own ITV show in her 20s and has since become a seasoned all-rounder. She does stand-up, she writes shows, novels, sketches and has even earned her stripes as a comedy actress.
‘I do live work — acting, writing and a bit of journalism,’ she explains. ‘I don’t know what people portentiously call it, a portfolio career perhaps. I do anything that is going basically.’
A few years ago Katy wrote her first novel, Brenda Monk Is Funny which she published using Unbound, a crowdfunding publisher. The tale of Brenda was taken from some of Katy’s own experiences in life and also things she had seen while out on the road performing stand-up comedy. ‘She’s not me — she has some similarities, but she is essentially a different creature altogether,’ Katy says of Brenda. She is a true stand-up by her very nature — it is under her skin, itching and bubbling up. ‘She’s an addict, but it’s the recognition of the crowd she needs, the validation, the space, and yet also the intimacy. And of course, the jokes — she sees the potential for material in everything and gets sweaty-palmed if she hasn’t been on stage in more than 48 hours, trying something out — it doesn’t matter where, it doesn’t matter when, no distance is too great, no slot is too late.’
Through Brenda, Katy explores the psychology of the stand-up, the real truth about those tears of a clown which so many comedians fall victim to after endless nights on the road playing to unappreciative crowds in small venues.
Like Katy says herself, showbusiness really isn’t fair, but having many plates in the air means Katy’s never really sitting back on her laurels.
‘I do enjoy having options. If I have had a long period of writing, it is really nice to be able to go out and do something that is a bit more sociable. But if I do that a lot then I have this feeling of just wanting to go back and be on my own.’
As with so many other performers, Katy knows the cyclical nature of the business. One minute you could be everywhere, the next nowhere. But she says working behind the scenes in television prepared her for that because she saw things from a different perspective.
‘It can be quite unstable and a bit