Men tell me I’m too rude to be successful. How funny

Its 9.30pm in the garden of a North London pub. I’m on a date with a well dressed man, who is an Arsenal fan who apparently “would’ve played football professionally” if he’d not torn his ACL in year 8. “I’ve got a good story you could use in your stand up,” he says. I wait with whatever the opposite of baited breath is. He tells me about how he had fallen off a fence one night, drunk, trying to break into the football club he used to play at and, as he fell, his trousers ripped off almost injuring his d**k. I’m not sure what he imagined I would do with that story in my stand up. A story that isn’t about me, has nothing to do with me, and doesn’t relate to me in any way. The only way it could work is here, right now, as an example of how often men who don’t know me feel qualified to give me advice on what is funny and what I should write and perform. Maybe he meant nothing by it. Maybe he harboured a secret desire to be a comedian, and so he was trying to find an outlet. Or maybe he thought, as so many men do, that I needed his help because, women can’t be funny on their own. Two years ago, when I was doing a show I’d written about an abortion at the Edinburgh Fringe, I came off stage. And in the bar, a male comedian who I didn’t know or invite to the show, told me he wanted to give me feedback. I hadn’t asked him, but of course, that wouldn’t stop a man who thinks he knows more than me. “You have the potential to be huge, but you talk about sex too much. It’s lazy. You won’t break into the mainstream if you keep doing it,” he said. The show he’d seen wasn’t about sex. It was about so much more. It was about grief and friendship, and the psychological impact an abortion had on me. I was perplexed that what he’d taken from it was that I’d been lazy by relying on sex for gags. This comment inspired my new show: The Lady Is a Tramp, in which I confront whether or not the tact I’ve taken in my writing has affected my career. I’m not sure what defines mainstream but if its ticket sales it’d be hard to argue I’m not that. However, I have been told on multiple occasions that my material is “too blue” for certain TV shows. I think this is what that older comedian in Edinburgh was trying to “save” me from: my niche material: talking about things like rape and abortion, everyday things women go through, won’t help me get on the tele. I’d love to know how many men told US comedian Shane Gillis before he went on Saturday Night Live last month and made a sub-par joke about how women at the gym “just dress like whores now” might affect his mainstream career. But I fear we are so desensitised to men calling women what they want that we tolerate it, but when a woman is on stage talking about sex or indeed sexual trauma, she isn’t a comedian: she is just a lazy whore who will never get to the big leagues. When comedian Vittorio Angelone made a rape joke about OnlyFans model Rebecca Goodwin, who was going through a rape trial, he received a backlash from the court of public opinion that he had indeed, fucked up. He issued a lengthy apology on his Instagram. What that situation with Angelone proved to me was that the industry I have been working in for almost a decade has made men feel legitimised to make rape jokes on stage, while telling women that if they talk about their own experiences with sexual trauma, they will always be seen as too blue. And those comedians will feel free to continue writing about whatever they like, as will I. And obviously, if you’re a male comedian reading this, you can use this in your stand up if you like. Grace’s new show The Lady Is a Tramp is currently on tour across the UK This week I have been… Reading… my new Kindle. While it pains me to remotely promote something that Mr-Capri-pant-loving Jeff Bezos makes money from, I must admit I have fallen in love with it. If I could marry an inanimate object I would wed thee. Before the Kindle I listened to audio books, which I now can admit can’t make me as smug as holding a tiny little plastic fake book does. My favourite books of the last month have been: Careless People; in an attempt to undo the support of Bezos I emphasise a book exposing the architects of Facebook, Instagram, Meta, whatever you call it. It made me want to delete my social media, but then instead I just told my followers to read it. London Falling has given me a strong paranoia that everyone in posh parts of London are tax-dodging, money laundering crooks grooming young kids into high-value crime. Strangers by Belle Burden has affirmed my thought that I’ll never marry, unless, obviously, it is to my Kindle. Buying… a bin. I am currently getting ready for the next leg of my UK tour. I’ve been trawling the internet for props that will keep me entertained on stage. In months to come my accountant will ask me why I spent £200 on a giant wheelie bin and I’ll have to say, you just had to be there. Watching… Youth. I am obsessed with Sharon Horgan and everything she does, always. Her new show is divine. It is smart, funny, beautifully shot, and watching it, I get to play my favourite game, which is guess which London street a scene is shot on.