Kathy Maniura: ‘I’ve played a paper straw, a nervous smoke alarm and now a middle-aged cycling man’

13 hours ago 13

Why did you get into comedy?
I’ve always loved making people laugh. I was raised on a diet of sketch shows (French and Saunders, Mitchell and Webb, Monty Python) and took any opportunity I could to be silly for an audience. I have a vivid memory of a very elaborate performance of We Three Kings for the Year 5 talent show (“sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, DYING!”) – I won. I’m drawn to big, playful characters – wigs, costumes, silly voices. At uni I started doing sketch comedy and never really stopped.

How would you describe what you do?
Gentle absurdity. It’s a silly good-natured sending up of recognisable things. In my last show, I brought to life a series of inanimate objects – including an annoying Californian paper straw, a pathetic electric scooter desperate to be unlocked, and an incredibly anxious, sensitive smoke alarm. My new hour merges this kind of absurd character comedy with drag. I’m pretending to be a middle-aged cycling man, complete with Lycra bulges, devastating divorce, outrageous income and zero emotional intelligence.

What inspired the show?
I used to cycle to work through central London, wearing jeans like a normal person, and I’d be overtaken by these guys all kitted out in the gear and I would just think to myself … surely, surely they cannot be cycling much further than me. Where are they going? From their central London flat to their slightly more central London office? Why won’t they put their feet down at the traffic lights? Are they OK?

Around a similar time, I became aware of drag kings as an art form (like drag queens, but performing heightened masculinity instead). I was so energised, inspired and amazed watching the iconic drag king collective Pecs and the Man Up! competition. It’s such an exciting, varied, DIY, punky art form and I started to wonder if I had a drag king character in me. The two ideas combined, and The Cycling Man was born …

What’s been one of your all-time favourite gigs?
Sometimes the weird gigs are the most unexpectedly fun. Last summer I did a spot at a small festival. I was with some brilliant comedians (Rosalie Minnitt, Lorna Rose Treen and Emily Bampton). We turned up and the person on the stage before us was giving a very earnest presentation about his research into arctic foxes. Getting into drag in the cold backstage area of the tent listening to the lecture I thought, ah – they may not be in the mood for absurd character comedy after this. How wrong I was! The audience were wonderful, and all the more wonderful for defying our expectations. That’s a pro and con of the job – you never know quite what you’re going to get until you turn up for a show.

Can you recall a gig so bad, it’s now funny?
When I was doing a show with my comedy partner Derek Mitchell, we booked a spot at one of the stages on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. It’s the main flyering thoroughfare during the fringe and there’s an open-air stage for acts to perform a snippet of their show. Lovely, in theory. Except what does well on that stage is juggling and a cappella singing, not alternative sketch comedy. I performed a solo piece – a wordy parody song. It was raining. The small crowd quickly dispersed. Derek laughed his head off as the light left my eyes while I continued to perform. There were two other people watching under an umbrella – my parents.

Any bugbears from the world of comedy?
There’s still a lot of unpaid and poorly paid gigs, many of which you travel for and, while the Edinburgh fringe itself is still seen as a rite of passage, it’s becoming prohibitively expensive. Many working-class comedians can’t do it. A lot of comedy spaces are inaccessible in other ways – male dominated, all white, in basements or upstairs in old pubs. It puts comedians in marginalised groups at a huge disadvantage in an industry that’s already hard work.

Worst advice you’ve ever been given?
A prospective agent once said to me that if you have a day job you like, you’re a “hobbyist”. Actually, creative work doesn’t have to be torture, and I think the idea that creative brilliance is born of hardship and that you have to give up everything to pursue your dreams is actually pretty toxic. That person did not become my agent!

What’s an important lesson you’ve learned from being a standup?
To try and fail! The only way you get better at comedy is by saying a joke out loud, in front of people, and seeing what happens. Once you’ve bombed a decent number of times, you learn that dying doesn’t actually mean dying.