WHEN BRITISH comedienne Jo Caulfield first came to Galway she had no idea why so many people were talking to her as if she were an old friend. It led to one hell of a night on the town, one that almost cost her her flight back home.
“I was with an American friend who is also a comedian,” Jo tells me during our Tuesday morning conversation. “We didn’t know why it was, but people were so friendly! We were like ‘These people don’t know us’, but everyone was talking to us!
“It was great so we went to every single bar on one street and each time the same thing happened. We ended up in a club by the quay. We stayed there ‘til 3am despite having to get a really early plane. It was a fantastic night, but I’ve lived in London too long, over here people are much friendlier, everybody talks to everybody else.”
Jo will be returning to Galway next week to play The Laughter Lounge in the Róisín Dubh, where she will be previewing material from her new Edinburgh show.
The Irish connection
Jo was born in Wales and raised in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire. Both her parents are Irish - her father is from Belfast and her mother from Co Tyrone. So is Jo’s Irish background important to her sense of identity?
“As a kid there were a lot of things I thought were very Irish,” she says. “I thought English people’s houses were very pristine, you couldn’t touch anything as everything had its place, and you couldn’t be a child in that house. Our house was clean but still messy and, this sounds terrible to say, but I thought that was a difference.
“We’d go to Ireland for our summer holidays and because it’s further west it stays light for longer so we were let stay out and play until 11 o’clock, so, I thought Ireland was this fantastic, wonderful place where people could be undisciplined.”
These days Jo finds her Irish identity tends to come out during football matches and the World Cup.
“The coverage of England over here is so unbalanced and the sooner they’re knocked out the better. This is where I feel Irish, not English,” she says. “I would support Northern Ireland and the Republic sooner than England who make themselves not really unlikeable at times. All this ‘We can win it’ is terrible, they never seem to be happy just to be there.”
A key Irish influence on Jo’s life, and her decision to become a comedian, was Irish comedy legend Dave Allen, whose Dave Allen At Large show was watched by the Caulfield family every week.
“You might think it an odd thing for a seven/eight-year-old girl to like but I found his sitting on a stool, talking to the audience, and telling stories really engaging,” she says. “I thought it would be a great thing to grow up to be. He also had a class and dignity about him that is not always common in comedians now.”
Jo worked as a waitress and even ran a vintage clothes store before deciding to take to the stage as a comedienne. Since then she has become one of the best and most in demand comics on the circuit, appearing regularly on Mock The Week and Have I Got News For You, writing for her old friend Graham Norton, and enjoying enormous critical acclaim:
“Incapable of doing a bad show” (The Scotsman ); “sharp-witted, urban comedy that goes down a treat” (The Times ); “Bitchy can be funny, and Jo Caulfield, luckily for us, is still that” (Three Weeks ); “at the top of the division...she is gentle, chatty, non-confrontational, but nevertheless manages to be fantastically bitchy” (The New Statesman ).
Comedic passions
Jo has played numerous Edinburgh festivals and this year she will be performing her new show Cruel To Be Kind in the city’s prestigious The Stand Comedy Club. However Laughter Lounge audiences will get to enjoy a sneak preview of her new material.
“There will be less about celebrities this time,” she says. “At the moment I’m mostly attacking myself rather than them. I was thinking of calling the show Cruel To Be Kind - The public humiliation of Jo Caulfield. There have been moments when I’ve gone ‘You idiot!’ so I talk about that. I will also talk about relationships, and I may mention my husband.”
Relationships and the interaction between men and women is something that fascinates Jo. Indeed The Times said her take on “the human condition would have sociologists stroking their beards in admiration”.
“I do a lot on the impasse between men and women,” she says, “and what we will never understand about each other, and what will always cause trouble. That kind of thing provides a release for women in the audience as women have a harder deal in life, and men can sit through it, knowing they still get paid more than us, but able to have a laugh.”
Jo’s comedy was described by one critic as a “celebration of anger” and it’s an assessment she wholeheartedly agrees with.
“I like that quote,” she declares. “Some people have asked ‘Are you a grumpy old woman?’ No I’m not as that sounds so defeatist! I hope that if I complain then other people who hate the same things will feel better. It is a celebration as there is nothing better then getting something off your chest.”
Apart from comedy, Jo’s other great passion is the Ramones.
“I love the Ramones,” says Jo. “I remember a boy I had a big crush on at school wearing a Ramones T-shirt and because they had leather jackets I though they were a heavy metal band. That was the worst thing you could be when you’re into David Bowie and the New Romantics.
“Later I got into rockabilly and into the Ramones through that. Their songs were so short and funny and Joey Ramone had one of the best rock’n’roll voices of all time.
“I remember when he died I was on the tube reading his obituary in The Times and there was a Scandinavian man opposite me and he was reading the headline and he went ‘Oh!’ I gave him the paper to read but I had to get off at the next stop. ‘No you keep it’, I said as I was getting off. It was a lovely moment between two Ramones fans.”
Jo also keeps an eye on the football and although she does not follow any club in particular, she shows extraordinary good taste in having a soft spot for Arsenal.
“You can’t help but really like the way Arsenal play,” she declares, “but I really got into Arsenal because of Arsène Wenger as I have a tradition of supporting a team because I like the manager. It’s hilarious but he fascinates me. He looks a bit Thunderbird-y and a bit like an old lesbian who has been in a comfortable relationship with Deirdre for a long time. He’s so unlike any other manager.”
Jo Caulfield plays The Laughter Lounge next Wednesday at 8.30pm as part of a double-headline show with Tom Binns who will present his Ivan Brackenbury’s Hospital Radio Show. Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago.
