London-based comic Julia Morris reckons that if she was still living in Australia, she would have been scraped from the bottom of the celebrity barrel to appear on This is Your Life by now.
‘I would’ve had my ‘this is my life’ now for sure!’ Morris, 35, purrs over the phone from Edinburgh, where she is preparing to stage her third Fringe show. ‘So, I decided to do my own This is Your Life, and not interview anyone else except me, and I just sort of surprise myself backstage…and there’s no red book involved!’
Morris, aka ‘j.Mo’ (‘If Jennifer Lopez can be j.Lo then surely I can be j.Mo!’), sets out to prove to audiences she is, in fact, a B-Grade celebrity back home.
The comic, who graced Australian TV screens in the ‘90s through a series of sketch, talk and variety shows, has been living in London for the past three years forging a successful career as a stand-up. She has become a favourite on the comedy circuit in London and at the Edinburgh Festival, where, in 2001, she was awarded a Herald Angel Award by the Glasgow Herald. She recently returned to the small screen earlier this year, to complete a four-month stint hosting BBC3’s Liquid News.
The transition from well-known celebrity to relative obscurity in London has been refreshing on the one hand, but posed new challenges on the other, Morris notes. Back home, the giggles would start as soon as she walked onto the stage. ‘People do get excited about a celebrity head on a stand-up stage,’ she quips. But whereas in Australia, Morris felt her penchant for glamorous get-up was often met with nods of approval for making an effort, her Prada frocks and gravity-defying Guccis in London seemed to be perceived as an unfunny smokescreen.
‘I had, “righto, this one’s dressed up, I bet she’s not funny”, Morris says, but adds: ‘Rather than having a real pre-existing ailment with my comedy, I had to sort of start again and remember what made me funny originally.’
‘[There’s been] lots of moments where I’ve thought, you idiot! You’ve just shafted your own career and moved to the other side of the world!’ But overall, Morris says she’s loved the opportunity to relaunch her stand-up career and the overall anonymity that comes with being in a completely new country, which has helped along things normally perceived as ‘simple’, like meeting her partner.
‘…At home, I’d be thinking “they know who I am”. It adds an extra slice of paranoia that’s not necessarily fun to have for your whole life. I’ve been given another crack at starting again and trying different projects and it’s been the making of me, without a doubt,’ Morris affirms. ‘I address my performances in different ways…I just try a little bit harder now which makes for a tip-tip performance.’
‘The other thing that is really encouraged in the UK’, Morris adds, ‘is that you keep your live [stand-up] going as strong as your television. Because if your television falls over, and it always does, you’re not having to go down to the supermarket and ask for a job!’
Another Australian female comic who has relocated to London is 26-year old Sarah Kendall. Her 2002 Edinburgh offering, Well Balanced, won her last year’s Herald Angel Award and prompted a London Daily Telegraph critic to point out that Kendall was one of a bunch of challenging comediennes with a ‘freshness of outlook, and a liveliness of intelligence, that quite eclipses their male counterparts.’ And in his view, Kendall was the ‘best of the lot’.
While Kendall points out that the ‘women in comedy’ debate comes up every year and is probably just a way for journalists to fill page space, she admits winning an award like the Herald Angel does have its benefits, even if she doesn’t entirely agree with the politics of awards.
‘It’s one of those things where it does kind of validate what you do, I wish it wasn’t true. I guess it increases your leverage a bit.’ It’s also Kendall’s third Fringe show, and she admits she feels the most relaxed than before any other Edinburgh performance.
Paul McDermott’s 2003 Edinburgh outing also, like Morris, marks a return to stand-up comedy from the world of television fame. McDermott was last in Edinburgh in the early ‘90s with the Perrier-nominated (in 1988) Doug Anthony Allstars. Since then, he’s been keeping himself busy hosting radio and television shows including the popular Good News Week (kind of like Have I Got News for You. He then found himself on the stage in The Witches of Eastwick and has turned his hand to writing and illustrating children’s books. McDermott has teamed up with Cameron Bruce and Mick Moriarty to form GUD, a show which won The Age Critics Award earlier this year for Most Outstanding Show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
According to McDermott, Karen Koren from the Gilded Balloon had been prompting his return to the Fringe for a couple of years. ‘I’ve never really felt like going back. The Festival is like a blood-bath for the performing arts, it’s like, gladiatorial! It’s a lot of hard work, you do a lot of shows, its good fun, but hellish at the same time.’
But forming GUD and the current show convinced McDermott it was worth it. ‘It’s a good show, I wouldn’t bring it back if I didn’t think it was worthy.
‘It will be interesting going back and starting from scratch again.’
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is at various venues from August 3-25, for full programme and booking details visit www.edfringe.com
Paul McDermott, Cameron Bruce and Mick Moriarty are GUD
DATES: August 5-24
TIME: 8pm
VENUE: Gilded Balloon Teviot – The Wine Bar
TICKETS: Mon-Thurs £9/£8, Fri-Sun £10/£9 Box Office 0131 226 2151
Sarah Kendall
DATES: August 5-24
TIME: 8.30pm
VENUE: Gilded Balloon – Cabaret Voltaire
TICKETS: Mon-Thurs £8/£7 Fri-Sun £9/£8 Box Office 0131 556 2151
Julia Morris in Will You Kids Get Out of the Pool Please!
DATES: August 2-7, 10-14, 17, 19-20, 25 (£9.50/£8) Aug 8-9, 15-16, 21-24 (£10.50/£9)
TIME: 9.30pm
VENUE: Pleasance Dome 1, Cabaret, Bristo Square
TICKETS: 0131 556 6550
