Interview with Harriet Braine
CB: How long have you been gigging in comedy?
PB: A couple of years.
CB: How would you describe your comedy?
PB: I get up and I say some things, a few jokes, a song, a poem. I’m usually in a bad mood and I resent the audience for being there and not understanding how funny I am, sometimes they do manage to win me over and we all have a good time.
CB: Which comedians influence your comedy?
PB: Lewis Schaffer, Stewart Lee, and Bobby Hackman.
CB: Did you always want to go into comedy?
PB: I wanted to be Michael Jackson or Michael Jordan or Eminem. None of these dreams have worked out yet, I’m currently focusing on being Eddie Murphy.
CB: How do you go about writing your material?
PB: When you’re physically moving around your brain works faster, it’s something to do with our ancestors hunting dinosaurs… I read it online. When I’m running to catch the train my brain comes up with ideas. I note them down and then say them on stage.
A female comedian recently said to me; ‘’…you can’t call yourself a comedian if your not writing!’’ I replied ‘’I watched an interview on youtube and Bill Burr said he doesn’t write stuff down!’’, she then went on to call Bill Burr a liar, which I thought was a bit harsh, he seems nice.
CB: Do you gig as a comedy performer full time or is it more of a part-time hobby? If so, do you find that your main job influences your material?
PB: I work at Leicester Square Theatre so I get to learn from some of the best comedians. I gig mainly in London, Leeds, and Edinburgh. Also I run my own show ‘An Alternative to Comedy’.
CB: What do you find the most enjoyable and frustrating parts of the comedy circuit?
PB: One of the most enjoyable things is when people come up to you and say ‘oh yeah I remember you, you did that poem about the… erm, the …forgetful atheist’, this has happened once.
The most frustrating thing is when you start out in comedy they say you have to pay your dues. What they mean by that is that you have to perform unpaid at a lot of badly run gigs. The sort of gigs where they haven’t worked out how to turn the mic on yet. After doing about two thousand of these gigs, someone shouts from the shadows: ‘Hey lets give this kid a chance!’, and then you get to do a nice gig where you can prove you’re funny. The problem is that when you do the nice gig you are totally out of your depth, because for starters the microphone works.
CB: What’s your favourite type of audience to perform to?
PB: Northerners, they have a good sense of humour and they know how to have a good time. I find the further North you get, the funnier the people are. Scottish people are the funniest, when performing in Scotland you have to bow before you start the performance.
CB: Have you been heckled a lot since you’ve started gigging? Do you enjoy being heckled? What’s the best heckle you’ve had?
PB: I do get heckled quite often, I don’t like to be too mean with my put downs but if I’m tired I may go at them. If the heckler says something funnier than what I was going to say thats fine too, they’re probably a Northerner.
CB: What advice would you give to new acts thinking of starting out in comedy?
PB: People say it takes about ten years before your any good, and even then there’s no guarantee you’ll make it. But the good thing is, by then, you will have no other skills or job prospects to fall back on, so you will have no other choice but to continue being a failure of a comedian and human being.
Image Credit: Tim Main
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