Lucy Beaumont has called out comedy nights for not including women on lineups.
The 41-year-old comedian took to social media to ask a number of comedy nights where all the women are on the lineups, as she screenshotted and brilliantly took down their male-dominated upcoming events.
‘Where’s all your women?’ asked the Meet The Richardsons star in her main post on X, which went on to fume: ‘Basically you can search every city for comedy this month I reckon about 90 percent have either no women or woman on the bill.
‘Some have one woman a month!! Back to 15 years ago and don’t get me started on tv panel shows ! It’s become okay again.’
She continued: ‘Let’s just call “most” of them what they really are – male panel shows that book a woman and male comedy clubs that tolerate women, the banter changes, the atmosphere becomes competitive and women don’t grow or shine or get equal employment.’
The Hullraisers actress then singled out a number of comedy clubs and nights around the country who don’t have a proportionate amount of women – if any – in their upcoming shows.
‘No women available for this night in Manchester,’ she wrote, sharing a screenshot of The Bierkeller in Manchester’s Saturday September 14 lineup, which included the male comics Mick Ferry, Ray Bradshaw, Connor Burns and Danny McLoughlin.
‘Back to 15 years ago one woman on the bill,’ she pointed out sharing a screenshot of The Comedy Store’s line-up this weekend which featured men Emmanuel Sonubi, Chris Kent, Nabil Abdulrashid and Tom Ward alongside the only female comic in Jo Caulfield.
‘Where’s all your women?’ Lucy said again alongside a screenshot of The Glee Club Birmingham’s Friday September 27 comedians, including Josh Pugh, Mark Maier, Jonny Awsum and Joe Kent-Waters, as well as a show from Robin Morgan.
Lucy repeated, ‘Where’s all your f***ing women? and linked to Hot Water Comedy Club’s comedy page – where there is quite literally not a woman in sight.
On their live comedy events line up, the club has a huge plethora of male comics lined up – Paul Smith, Tony Carroll, Danny McLoughlin, Alun Cochrane, Michael Shafar, Sam Avery, Adam Anwar, Dion Owen, Glenn Wool, and Larry Dean, just to name a few – but absolutely no women.
One person commented with a misogynistic comeback and suggested men are simply – on the whole – funnier than women.
‘Lucy Lucy! Sex is irrelevant, being funny isn’t,’ the X user wrote. ‘There aren’t many funny women, there actually aren’t that many funny men. Just a few more funny men than funny women in my honest opinion.’
To this, the star expertly retorted: ‘2024. Comedy and being funny is an emotion, monkeys do it.
‘This idea is still thought by so many, things have slipped, they promised 50/50 on screen years ago. If tv does it, live comedy will too, if there’s two/three male presenters – one comic female isn’t fair.’
Another troll commented: ‘That’s a pretty obvious result of having many fewer female comedians. Maybe write some jokes about it and go be funny???’
Replying to the dated view, Lucy made the point that when not enough female comics are being shown on TV and employed in the industry, these kind of views return.
‘When we’re not employing enough female comics, all this comes back to surface,’ she said, tagging @Channel4, @ComedyStoreMCR, and @HWCCLiverpool.
Ten years ago the BBC said it would work to improve the gender gap on comedy panel shows, which are historically a bit of a boys club with the exception of new offerings like Taskmaster upping the proportion of female comics on TV.
But research earlier this year suggested this effort has plateaued at a 60/40 split of men and women comedians on TV as of 2020.
An anonymous programming commissioner told The Times in January: ‘Panel shows are essentially three hours of willy-waving machismo and one-upmanship joke-telling.
‘It’s not a great environment for many female comedians to do their best material because they have a very “blokes down the pub” feel.
‘Many good comedians, including women, really hate the environment and just don’t want to do it, which is one of the reasons there are so few on there. We have tried hard to book more women and come up across this issue constantly.’
Lucy previously called out sexual predators in the comedy industry before allegations about Russell Brand came to light this time last year.
In a podcast episode recorded two months before the world was talking about the issue, Lucy claimed there are ’10 to 15′ predatory men on the comedy circuit.
Chatting on The Comedian’s Comedian podcast, host Stuart Goldsmith asked Lucy what has held her back the most in her comedy career.
‘Predatory male behaviour,’ she replied.
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‘I’ve had quite a few incidences where if you were in any other workforce you would go to HR [Human Resources], but there isn’t one.
‘I think it’s just everywhere and it’s not talked about enough. It upsets me when I hear about young female comics having the same experiences.
‘I thought for a while it was the same five or six people – and now it’s not – I could name you 10 or 15, because of course people talk,’ she claimed.
‘Comedy has the biggest gossips ever so everybody knows – or if you don’t know the ones I know yet then you will do soon.
‘It [comedy] attracts such interesting, passionate, raw, edgy, wounded people – but it also attracts predatory men who are really messed up and sexually have been repressed for years. And they get a bit of fame and display these behaviours.
‘It just gets covered up. Their agents know and the channels know and nobody seems to be doing anything about it,’ she continued.
‘There’s been times when I’ve just wanted to go on Twitter and just let people know everyone that we talk about, but we’re not allowed to say.’
Metro.co.uk has reached out to the comedy clubs mentioned for comment.
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