That huge round of applause from the audience is addictive
HER NEW TOUR
What is it like working on TV shows like Comedians Giving Lectures and The Great British Sewing Bee?
Comedians Giving Lectures can be like hosting a stand-up show and I love it because these very high-status, experienced comics are often doing brand new material because they’ve written a lecture for the show.
For me, it feels like a gig rather than a TV programme. In Sewing Bee, I occasionally write jokes for the links, but you’re doing a joke for eight people who are really thinking about sewing; they’re not thinking about your pun on the wrap dress.
You have been at the top of your game for decade with your own comedy series, Out Of Her Mind, bestselling books like Animal and Sex Power Money. What will you be looking at in your new tour Success Story?
What I want to explore is how do we define success and when do we define it. Does it change with age, do we only want things we can’t have? When we attain our goals, do we move the goal posts and become unsatisfied with what we’ve got and want something else instead?
I’m 40 now and it’s a reflective time; it feels like a very adult age. Looking back on my life to when I was 14, I really wanted to be on television. That’s where I work now but is it what I imagined it to be?
Has it been hard to deal with personal challenges alongside professional success?
I was having years of infertility and when we were going through IVF, the word ‘success’ was used a lot about the process. So, I wanted to contrast that with these other things that are seen as representing successful lives, such as finding someone we love and having a family. There are a lot of areas being covered.
Are you looking forward to being back on tour again now venues across the country have re-opened following the lockdown closures?
Yes, it can be tiring, but when you’re in the dressing room before a show and you hear the hubbub of a busy room, you feel very lucky that people will come and see you at all, never mind in their hundreds or thousands. There’s a description in [comic] Alan Davies’ book about how walking out on stage as a comedian is the closest you can get to being a toddler taking your first steps towards your excited parents. That’s the feeling comedians are trying to recreate by getting this huge round of applause from people who like you and are pleased you are there. That’s the side of it that’s addictive and compulsive.
What drives you to take your comedy to the next level and what helps stop success going to your head?
No one likes to do a mediocre gig, or worse, a flat gig, especially when you’ve earned an audience from TV work. The idea that they might come to
see you for the first time and leave disappointed really keeps you going. At the end of a show, you don’t want a crowd going ‘yeah, that was fine’. You want them to say ‘oh god, do you remember that bit?’ And ‘I must tell auntie Susan about this bit’. You want an audience to be engaged in what you’re saying. When I watch comedy and want to text my dad about something that was said during a show, I know it was brilliant.
You’ve done a lot during your career, but one of your early TV appearances saw you working alongside Dead Or Alive singer and Celebrity Big Brother reality TV star Pete Burns. Tell us more. about how you terrified him...
GREAT BRITISH SEWING BEE PRESENTER AND ALL-ROUND FUNNYWOMAN SARA PASCOE LOOKS AT THE MEANING OF SUCCESS WITH
At the end of a show, you don’t want a crowd going ‘yeah, that was fine’
He did a reality show where he was looking for a PA and I was told I would get £50 cash in an envelope if I kept accosting him in the street.
So, outside a coffee shop in Soho, I had to pretend to be a superfan and hug and kiss him and say how much I love him and see how all these potential PAS would deal with this crazy, neurotic fangirl. At the end of that day, he said that I scared him which just showed how good my acting was.
That show is sometimes repeated on an MTV channel and I’ll get a text or a tweet saying ‘oh my god, I had no idea you were such a Pete Burns fan’.
Sara Pascoe’s Success Story tour runs from November 10 until next April. Visit sarapascoe.co.uk for full tour dates and ticket details.