Comedian Bridget Christie: ‘I see my flasher’s penis all the time. But I can make horrible things amusing’
‘I must tell you how old I’m going to be when I die,” says Bridget Christie, whipping out her phone to show me a small cartoon gravestone bearing the date of her demise. Fittingly, we’re sitting in a churchyard near her home in London, not far from some actual gravestones. According to the app, Christie, who recently turned 50, has 34 years left. As one of the many people who lost loved ones to Covid-19, death has been on her mind during the pandemic, and her thoughts on ageing have been exacerbated by the arrival of the menopause. In lockdown, preoccupied by the passage of time, she decided to look at the moon every night: “I thought about how many moons I’ve got left to see. I was like, ‘We’re not here for very long – what are you going to leave behind?’”
Her thoughts coalesced into her
BBC Radio 4 series Mortal, which tackled birth, life, death and the afterlife. Working with BBC Radio Theatre, where she’d previously recorded standup, she decided to try something different. Whispered monologues, surreal characters (Zeus, the Grim Reaper and dead Bridget among them) and real telephone conversations are stitched together into something quite intimate. Although she got their permission, she didn’t tell her dad, sister Eileen and friend Ashley exactly when she’d be recording their phone calls, lending a naturalness to the chats.
One poignant conversation was about her nephew Luke, who tragically died young. “The stakes were high,” she says, “because I wanted to get it right for my sister. I felt quite anxious.” On the night it went out, the tension caused a “proper, full-on hot flush”.