Lauren Carroll - Tubthumping
Stand-up comedian Lauren Carroll talks to us about the desire to be funny, self-indulgence and definitely not getting drunk
Location: The Beach Sun Retreat, Dymchurch www.beachsunretreat.com/
“Pre-show rituals? Get drunk. Actually can you change that? Say ‘likes to have a couple of drinks’, not ‘gets drunk’.”
We aren’t sure why Lauren is worried, as her act is centred on her relationships with her boyfriend, her dad and herself. So, it’s not like she can be told off any more than she likely already is.
“I get nervous, every single time,” she says. “It’s so embarrassing. Even if you’re doing really well, to go up there and say ‘everyone should listen to me’, it is quite uncomfortable.”
Lauren Carroll has been in the comedy game for three years and been a big part in creating a ‘Canterbury circuit’ with the Sunday Roast Comedy Club alongside her significant other, George.
Her Kent exploits have seen Lauren share stages with comedy crowd-pullers such as Paul Sinha, Bobby Mair, Helen Bauer, Jamali Maddix and Fern Brady, while the pre-Covid London circuit was also calling, with the capital’s grafter gig Not Another Comedy Night, the Vauxhall Comedy Club and the more-lauded Angel Comedy Club in Islington all ticked off.
But that’s not to suggest that pre-game tension is gone.
“Walking on to the stage is the most exciting part of it,” she says. “You can feel yourself leave and someone else get on there. If you smash the first line, then you’re setting yourself up for a good gig. Those first few jokes are really important. I’ve fuc*ed up whole sets before by just stumbling on one word at the beginning.”
Having studied drama and the infamous stand-up comedy module at the University of Kent, Lauren has had a good grounding in getting into character. OK, so the tattoos don’t come off when she sits back down and the platform boots are an enduring fixture, but the comedian assures me [need an earlier byline?] that on-stage Lauren is quite different from the one chatting to us from her spot in the bath at The Beach Sun Retreat in Dymchurch.
“My stage persona is definitely not as nice as me in real life. She is dark, self-deprecating and probably a little bit of a bit*h,” explains Lauren. “The way I dress is part of it – I’d think ‘right, I’m going on stage, I need to look extra me’. It feels like a bit of a shield, but I wouldn’t say that the way I look represents what I’m saying.
“It’s all observational, but it’s all about myself. It’s the most self-indulgent 10 minutes you’ll see. It’s all about me, my life, my family and my boyfriend.
“It’s not ‘isn’t it funny when people do this…’, it’s ‘well, I do this’ because the safest thing to do is to take the piss out of yourself because it gives you permission to take the piss out of everyone else. The audience knows you’re on their level.
“But mainly I say things about my dad and my boyfriend George.”
Lauren swears there’s no correlation between the two, but then there is a joke in her set about one of them getting her out of the bath.
GOING OFF PISTE
“I thought I wanted to be an actress,” says Lauren. “But I realised I only wanted to make people laugh. I’d go on stage and do a whole play, but there would be a few moments of glory, where people would be laughing at me.
“Doing a play for an hour or so, there’s less blame on you if everything goes wrong, but there’s also less glory.
“If I do five or 10 minutes on stage for stand-up, if it goes wrong, it’s all on me, but if it goes right, it’s all mine, too!”
Having started her stage journey in acting, there are skills transferable to the comedy routine, provided no one sticks their oar in.
“If you go up there and you don’t know what you’re going to say, you could be in trouble,” she explains. “But if you learn your routine as a monologue, you can deliver it perfectly and improve it. It’s like muscle memory. If you do a set enough times, you can find room to play with the audience a bit more.”
There are some, like Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle, who relish the heckler. Who see the battle as a badge of honour, often to the heckler’s immediate pis*ed-up remorse.
“It’s all observational, but it’s all about myself. It’s the most self-indulgent 10 minutes you’ll see.”
“I don’t encourage it at all, because I like to stick to a script in my head. Women don’t really tend to shout. But if a man shouts, no matter who they are, I will reply with ‘Shut up, Dad’. And that normally kills it.
“I’ve never had an experience of somebody really, really going for it. If someone does keep at it, there is a way of turning it around on to them and questioning why they want so much attention, like ‘what happened to you in your life to make you want this attention?’. Make it all deep and psychological.”
Lauren believes studying the craft is extremely important, from dealing with the hecklers, who are “part of a culture that you won’t find anywhere else”, through to standing on the shoulders of giants.
“We go to so much comedy and we put on so much comedy and we watch so much on TV that I can’t really enjoy it,” she explains. “I end up thinking ‘oh, I would have said this…’.”
The desire to be something different is well reflected in her favourite comedian – an Australian guy called Sam Campbell who is virtually un-googleable – as well as her confrontation of female comedian stereotypes.
“People say that all the female comedians are the same... blonde, thin women blah, blah, blah,” says Lauren. “They aren’t the only women making jokes, they’re just the only women being shown to us.
“Women are discouraged from birth from being funny. Because being funny is being vulgar and rude, loud and saying things you shouldn’t say. Little girls get told something very different to little boys.”
But Lauren embraces her femininity, even accentuates it with her stage persona. And therein lies her power as a stand-up: knowing when to use it and knowing when to blow it out of the water.
“If I had walk-on music... it would have to be something sickly sweet and poppy,” she says. “Like the Spice Girls. The music would come on… “If you wanna be my lover…”. I’d pick up the mic and say ‘Hello you cu*ts’. That juxtaposition would be wicked.”