A Book For Her
A Book For Her ★★★★
Written by Veronica Lee in The Arts Desk on August 13th, 2015
Bridget Christie, the comic credited with bringing feminism to the fore with her 2013 Edinburgh Comedy Awards-winning show, broadens her target for withering political analysis and to great effect.
In A Book For Her (also the title of her recently published book) Christie guys herself in her opening line, telling us that 11am is the perfect time for comedy about gender-based violence – “or at misogynists’ funerals, widows love it” – and that she’s not really a feminist, as that was done for marketing purposes to sell the book.
There’s a masterful take-down of Nigel Farage (an easy target for satire, yes, but never done as skilfully as this), who she says is a brilliantly postmodern comic creation; she pays tribute to “the Borat of the European Parliament” for keeping in character, even when walking away from a plane crash.
In a show still a little rough at the edges and covering lots of territory in her mile-a-minute style, she addresses the current Labour leadership contest (cue much head-banging with the microphone), Jeremy Clarkson’s recent notoriety, alleged left-wing bias at the BBC, Rachel Dolezal and the iniquities of the Conservative government.
There’s a superlative segment in which she, in a series of reducing scenarios, imagines a future in which right-wing comics such as Jim Davidson and Roy Chubby Brown would find nowhere to perform as all the arts centres, women’s refuges and “the room where they keep the Human Rights Act” would have been closed by David Cameron and Co.
The final section, about the unfairness of VAT on women’s sanitary products but none on some sugery confectionary, is a little too lengthy and thin on the funnies, but she pulls it back magnificently with a clarion call for us to change that: George Osborne, be prepared for the onslaught.
Written by Veronica Lee in The Arts Desk on 13th August 2015.
Filed Under: A Book For Her (The Show), Review