Canterbury’s Harriet Kemsley talks comedy, Smirnoff Ice, cellulite machines and screaming on a computer game

A regular on your TV screens, Harriet Kemsley is well and truly on ‘the circuit’. Live at the Apollo, tick, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, done, Hypothetical, yep, Roast Battle, uh huh, Comedy Central at The Comedy Store, nailed it, and many, many more. But I’m running out of commas.

We first got to know Harriet as one half of Bobby & Harriet Get Married - a real but also not-so-real mockumentary co-created with husband Bobby Mair (just to be clear, they are married in real life and have a child together) - in which we saw Harriet’s on-stage, vulnerable yet beautifully barbed persona in its full glory.

Harriet will be touring her new critically-acclaimed show Honeysuckle Island around the UK, culminating in a hometown gig in Canterbury in December.

But more importantly, Harriet grew up in the same town as me, so I took the opportunity to find out exactly how many Vodka Red Bulls she could drink on a night out in Churchill’s back in 2007, as well as a bit about her new show.

Hey Harriet, it’s great to speak with you! I know you’re originally from the Canterbury area, so, first things first… where was your hangout, Churchill’s or The Bizz?

Yeah, we were at Churchill’s, more than we were at school. It doesn’t make any sense, we were there nearly every night, but sometimes we’d switch it up and go to Alberrys.

Ah, OK, well Alberrys is still there now!

I actually tried for a job there once because I was friends with everyone there and I did a trial shift. And it went so badly that they couldn’t hire me. It was so embarrassing.

What happened?

They said ‘OK, can you make this cocktail?’ and they gave me the ingredients. I went to make it and it said ‘6x Smirnoff, and so I opened six Smirnoff Ices and then I poured them in and then I was like ‘It doesn’t fit in the jug!’.

Obviously, it was the brand of vodka Smirnoff. So yeah, I think they were like ‘It’s gonna cost us too much money to employ her’.

Got ya. So, what school didn’t you go to?

Simon Langton for secondary school. My sister went there as well. And then my dad ended up teaching there as well, years later after I’d left, thank goodness. But yeah, I love Canterbury. I still go back all the time - my parents are still there and my sister’s there and lots of my friends are still there.

You’ve got a gig at the Gulbenkian on the 10th of December - is that so you can stick around and have some Christmas drinks afterward?

Yeah, it’s just to have a really big night out! It’s just a really good excuse to have a show and go out afterwards. The Gulbenkian show feels intense. But I was like, let’s just push myself and see if I can do it. It’s definitely the biggest theatre by far on the tour. But I grew up going there and watching things. So it just felt really exciting to be able to add it.

The show sold out at Edinburgh… is the tour bigger for you? Or is Edinburgh bigger?

I think it’s gotten to the stage now where touring is more important. I mean, nothing’s more important. But I think that to be able to tour is kind of the goal, you know. And so, Edinburgh is a really good, comedy-savvy place where you can get a show really tight. But to be honest, just being back and doing stand-up again, anywhere is very exciting.

Plus, you’re on all the major shows now. You’re officially on ‘the circuit’ - right?

It’s too late. Yeah, I’m on ‘the circuit’. Yeah.

We should probably go on to Honeysuckle Island, and what it's all about. The synopsis is interesting, sort of taking aim at the beauty industry?

Yeah, it’s a fun and silly show. Like the aim is still to be funny. I discovered this holiday destination that I created when I was 11 years old. It had zip-lines and monkeys and waterfalls. But when I looked at it closely, I’d drawn a cellulite machine in the corner. It’s mad that I did that at 11, that I was aware of that. And I’d spelt ‘cellulite’ right and ‘island’ wrong. Something about my priorities was off. And so it’s just about the noise you start to hear and all this messaging. Now, having a daughter and what that’s been like and then thinking about her future and my past and it’s just a funny show, basically. But, yeah, it touches on the beauty industry - definitely.

Much of your work is obviously quite personal and quite funny - like the stuff you do with Bobby. Is it hard to then add that serious element to it?

I think it’s impossible not to say what you believe. And I think if you’re coming from a place of something that you feel passionately about, it will only make it funnier and more interesting. But yeah, I definitely try to do it in a fun, silly way. I’m not somebody that can stand on stage and lecture. Nobody is going to be interested in that whatsoever. This is not my TED Talk, it’s very much a stand-up comedy show.

Where did your career in stand-up comedy actually start? That moment that you kind of went ‘Oh, I could try stand-up’.

It was really weird. I wanted to do acting. And I left university and I was like ‘I don’t know what to do - I don’t know how to do this’. And I spoke to my parents, and they’d watched Live at the Apollo the night before. And they said ‘We think you should try stand-up. Funny things always happen to you, and you should talk about it’.

I didn’t know anything about stand-up. It just felt like this whole different world. And they were like ‘Just go and do it and don’t tell anyone’. And so I went and I did it and I fell in love.

I’ve never met another stand-up whose parents have recommended it. I think usually they have much higher expectations for their children, like to be doctor. I think they regret it now!

But then there was a really nice moment when I did Live at the Apollo and it just felt like a real circular moment.

The first time we saw you on TV I think was Bobby & Harriet Get Married, and I remember thinking ‘Is this real?’. Have you ever thought about doing more?

Yeah, we’d love to do more. I think it was, because it was us getting married, it was kind of a standalone thing. But now that we’ve had the baby, I think that there’s definitely lots to talk about.

I mean, it was mad, we got the commission six weeks before we got married. And so we were planning the wedding, filming and writing. We just looked back at all our past arguments and then we could rehash them and write lines for each other and recreate them. In a very roundabout way, I think it was quite a healthy way to deal with this kind of stuff.

We’ve seen you and Bobby roasting each other in comedy. Do you guys just leave it all ‘on the stage’ and then come away from it?

Yeah, I think we both know each other so well and we’re so good at knowing each other’s voices. At the end of the day, the aim is to be funny. And I’ve also found the more I’ve done stand-up, the better I felt about myself because you can sometimes take things so seriously and so personally and feel so bad about something. But if you can talk about it and laugh about it, really. I think it really is better in the long run.

It says here that you’re in a video game? As ‘Nashandra, the final boss of the video game Dark Souls II’. What!?

Well, yeah, it’s so weird because I didn’t know anything about video games. I’ve never played it. But I still get comments on some of my videos and stuff from fans of the game. It was a very fun thing to be a part of - it basically involves just me screaming in different ways. Because I had to be defeated. But yeah, it’s definitely a very fun world.

Is acting something you’d like to go back to, then?

Yeah, definitely. I think it might be quite peaceful in a way to say somebody else’s words rather than just saying things you think all the time. There might be something quite calming about that. So yeah, that’s something I’d like to do.

FOR TICKETS TO HARRIET KEMSLEY AT THE GULBENKIAN ARTS CENTRE IN CANTERBURY CLICK HERE