THE FUTURE’S LOOKING
FROM HER STINT AT THE PARALYMPICS TO WRITING BOOKS, MS JONES IS A BUSY LADY. WHAT’S NEXT? ASHLEY DAVIES FINDS OUT
IF, SOMEHOW, you weren’t aware of what a mischievous sense of humour Rosie Jones has, or indeed what a thoroughly decent person Nish Kumar is, you’d be horrified by the images that exist of her lying on the ground beside her fellow comic, apparently having been pushed over by him.
The pictures started emerging a few years ago in Edinburgh, when Rosie spotted her dear friend and Mash Report presenter surrounded by adoring fans. ‘How can I bring him down?’ she thought at the time, and so was born a dark running joke.
‘He knows that I have a very wicked sense of humour and now, when we see each other, I very slowly lower myself to the ground and he knows exactly what stunt I’m going to pull and he yells: “Jones, don’t you f***ing dare!”’ says Rosie, who has cerebral palsy, which affects her speech, mobility and fine motor skills.
‘It’s even better now because the entire comedy industry is in on the joke and people get so excited when they see “the fall” happen in real life.’ Rosie’s just back from a rewarding but exhausting stint in Tokyo, reporting on the Paralympics for The Last Leg.
Thanks to the time difference, she had to wake up at 5am to do her live links with the studio, and would then spend her day watching as much sport as she could possibly squeeze in. And because there were no spectators allowed in the venue, she quickly became known as Paralympic GB’s cheerleader.
‘Although I loved it when Great Britain won medals, I quickly realised that it was more about the people and their stories,’ she says.
‘I felt incredibly honoured to get to know the Paralympic athletes and it made me consider how I see my own disability.’
Rosie has spoken in the past about how rare it was, when she was growing up, to see people who looked like her on the telly. ‘Looking back now, that was very demoralising because I had nobody to look up to and to think, “If they can do it, I can do it,”’ she says. ‘I feel very honoured that some people consider me to be a role model (I don’t know why they do because I’m an idiot) and I hope young disabled people and young queer people can see what I’m doing and realise that they too can be whoever they want to be.
‘My dream is to increase representation even more, especially when it comes to intersectionality.
‘I really want young people to realise that they can be more than ‘a box’. It’s incredibly important to me to increase representation of not just disability but all minority groups.’
One of silver linings of the halt on foreign travel shows during the pandemic was the creation of Channel 4’s Trip Hazard: My Great British Adventure, in which Rosie takes celebrity pals on outings across the UK. It’s great telly for sure, even if some of the scenes (such as Rosie joining a wrestling team and hammering some hot metal in Norwich) must have caused the health and safety and insurance bods a few anxious moments.
But that’s not all she’s been up to this year. Far from it, in fact. Her first book, The Amazing Edie Eckhart, has just been published. It’s about an 11-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who decides to make changes in her life when her best friend gets a girlfriend and she finds herself at a loose end.
Writing a children’s book had always been a dream of Rosie’s. She was a voracious reader as a kid, but never saw a
‘I felt incredibly honoured to get to know the Paralympic athletes in Tokyo’
person like her reflected in literature. She’s currently working on the second book in the series, and gets a real thrill from seeing children reading what she’s written.
Despite having such a packed schedule this year, she’s also found time to perfect her latest stand-up show, which she will be bringing to the Aberystwyth Comedy Festival, whose line-up also includes Joe Lycett, Bridget Christie, Olga Koch, Simon Munnery, The Delightful Sausage and works in progress from Jessica Fostekew, Sophie Duker and
Lou Sanders.
Rosie’s work-in-progress is a show called
Unapologetic, and it’s all about growing up, getting to know yourself better and turning 30 during a pandemic. One of her ambitions
(and she has many) is to write and star in her own sitcom, and she has several ideas in development. ‘Apart from this,’ she continues, I think it’s just my dream to be able to carry on being able to work in the comedy industry,’ she says. ‘Everything I’m doing right now – gigging, writing children’s books, presenting travel shows and being a complete nuisance on The Last Leg – if I was able to still do that forever, I would be a very happy lady.’
Rosie plays Arad Goch on Oct 3 as part of the Aberystwyth Comedy Festival (Oct 1-3), abercomedyfest.co.uk