Points: 0

Completing an arts based degree in Brighton gave Joanna Neary the impetus to step into the world of comedy, acting, and illustrating. Jo came to the fore in 1998 with the character based show An Evening With Joanna Neary. After gigging clubs and pubs across the land, Jo became a certified Edinburgh Festival hit in 2004 when she was nominated for Best Newcomer at the much lauded Perrier Comedy Awards. A year later she won the Best Comedy Theatre Actress award. Since then Jo has worked alongside Stewart Lee (Fist of Fun, This Morning With Richard Not Judy) and nowadays she is starring alongside Johnny Vegas as Judith in the smash BBC3 comedy Ideal, whilst planning a new show for this year's Edinburgh Festival.

Comedy Career Path
I started out performing, doing the visual and performing arts degree at Brighton University, which was kind of like a fine art degree, where you did performance instead of painting. I wrote some plays after that, then I thought I'd have a go at doing comedy and see if I worked, and so I did a gig, a comedy night, and it went really well. But I didn't do stand-up at first, I did characters.

When I graduated I became a nanny, but only because people were saying so what are you going to do now then? And I found it really hard not having the "I'm a student" line. So I thought, I'll become something really easy for people to understand, but really I was in seven bands or something like that. And writing and performing, writing little comedy plays.

Career Highs
I think the highs are, when you do a whole new set, or a whole new show and you've got no idea how it's going to go. The adrenaline is obviously quite palpable and when it goes well, it just feels great, and you're really glad you've had a go. It's really scary, but it doesn't matter, because it makes it worthwhile. The best thing is being in front of an audience, I love live stuff, I love being on the stage more than anything else. More than radio or television I think at the moment, it's lovely.

Career Lows
When I left college and I was putting on little shows in a pub, we'd all be standing backstage really nervous. I remember leaning on this banister waiting for the audience to come, saying "I so scared" and someone saying "Don't worry, you're brilliant, we're all brilliant!" And I just thought, if this was a Channel 4 documentary about amateur theatre, we'd be hated by the entire country!

Then the audience would arrive, and there'd be less people than there were on stage. They were low points! I did go through years of working really hard and not getting any notice or attention, but it's all an apprenticeship I suppose. By the time I did get to Edinburgh and London, I was probably quite impressive!

Comedy Favourites
Victoria Wood and Julie Walters
John Sparks
Stewart Lee
Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish
Caroline Aherne
Paul Whitehouse
Tony Hancock
Joyce Grenfell
Paul Foot
Chris Neil
Josie Long
Johnny Vegas

TV
I'm really enjoying comedy cuts at the moment, on ITV2. It's really good because they've got 50 stand-up comedians over a 10 part series doing comedy the way they want to do it. It's just so refreshing, it's great, really nice to see.

The Mitchell and Webb look was good. There was some good old-fashioned fun in some of it.

Live performers
I love Paul Foot and Josie Long. I love Stewart Lee, he's brilliant, I'm going to go and see his new show about Judas at the end of the month. I really like comedy actors, character comedians like Count Arthur Strong, Ricky Grover and Terry Titter. Julia Davis is great and Mark Gatiss.

To read all Jo's contributions to the site, plus all our most newsworthy events from February 2007, simply click here.

My Web Address:

Joanna Neary's Web World