Famed comedian Jenny Éclair is on a national tour to celebrate her career and new autobiography. So did she get Nottingham's audiences laughing...
More grey than Slab Square. Bespectacled, feisty, irreverent, menopausal, with a taste for Prosecco and men in grey beards, and that’s just the audience. Jenny Éclair takes the stage at a packed-out Playhouse with her inimitable stand-up style promoting her autobiography Jokes, Jokes, Jokes.
Jenny celebrates a career that has seen her go from a drama student turned John Cooper Clarke inspired poet; to an early 80’s stalwart of the emerging comedy scene, to being the first woman comedian to win the acclaimed Perrier Award. Jenny starts with a refreshing policy of distributing a family pack of Family Favourites biscuits, exclusively to the front row.
She keeps it local, addressing her remarkable resemblance to her friend and confidante, the local legend that is Sue Pollard. Disproving the adage that you never see them in the same room, she shows a photo of them together resembling twins. Before gleefully asserting, with comedic venom that Sue remains ten years her senior.
Her autobiographical live show is aided by the large screen and we are introduced to photos of her military espionage-loving, well-travelled family over the decades. Jenny evidences how her ‘middle child syndrome’ forged her quest to “Just be famous.” A quest which takes this packed-out Playhouse on an intimate and hilarious journey through her decades, with an intense honesty which helps her to mine comedy in all the areas of life, as experienced by the audience members.
Her brilliance is to find subjects that many of the audience connect with
From teenage obsession with Top of the Pops, to sleeping with every man in Manchester whilst at drama school, to her experiences around anorexia, punk poetry, and the Perrier Award. Jenny regales us with tales of being paid by the BBC as a totemic Grumpy Old Woman whilst communicating what is clearly pride and joy at being able to publish 8 other books.
Her brilliance is to find subjects that many of the audience connect with in a visceral manner then milk the universal human comedy within. As she jumps through the decades, she compares and contrasts activities, such as the difference when urinating in the street as a giggling, discrete 20 year girl when the pubs closed, to that of a 60 year old in the same plight, who couldn’t move her granny knickers out the way in time and then couldn’t get up, having soaked herself, reducing some of the laughing punters with bladder issues, to moments of moisture.
In an age when comedy is the new rock and roll, where it is the duty of the youthful, clever and spritely newcomers to seize the crowns and usurp the old school, it is heart-warmingly re-assuring to witness one of the time-served and original veterans reassert their place in the game. I’m already looking forward to the next chapter.
Jenny Eclair: Jokes, Jokes, Jokes, Live! played at the Nottingham Playhouse on April 23rd 2025.
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