Don't Be a Sexist Promoter.


It wasn’t until I posted a tweet to advertise the next two months’ Mostly Comedy line-ups that I realised the acts appearing were all men.


I’m annoyed about this, if I’m honest, as I try hard not to make this the case. There should always be an equal spread of male and female comics, though admittedly, however aware I am of this, sometimes acts’ availabilities mean the line-up I aim for may not be the line-up I get. However good our intentions may be, we ultimately want a bill that will sell, plus we reach a point where we just need a bill confirmed.

It’s not that I want to go down the same route the BBC famously – and controversially – went with panel shows, insisting that every show should have at least one woman in the line-up. If anything, this made their male-to-female ratio worse, with them settling for just one woman per show, instead of an even amount. Also, why make panel shows the scapegoat, when male bias is a problem across the board, with too few dramas with strong female characters, and with men dominating just about every other field of entertainment too. It’s a deep-seated problem across all walks of life in fact, not just in television.

Looking back on the rest of the year’s Mostly line-ups, the statistics are reasonable, but not great; from January to July we’ve had eight women and fourteen men on the bil. I’ll do my best to rectify this as the year goes on, though however hard I try, if a high profile act says yes to the gig, we’ll always book them over a lesser one. Sadly, that’s business, though I’ll try to even the field by approaching more women than men in the first place (like I do in my private life).

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Image
Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...
Read more

Stevenage: A (Tiny) River Runs Through it.

If ever a river was mis-sold, it’s the Roaring Meg in Stevenage. I just walked past it on my way to the retail park that has taken its name. They’re similarly uninspiring. The river is less of a roar and more of a dribble; cystitis sufferers produce greater flow. The retail park is soulless. What was once a thriving enterprise is nearly devoid of atmosphere, save an underlying essence of emptiness and despair. With a Toys R Us. When it was first built I was excited. Back then, the thought of a bowling alley, an ice rink, a Harvester and a Blockbuster Video within a small surface area was enticing. I celebrated many birthdays on site. There was an indoor cricket pitch there for a while where I once had a joint party with a friend. Why someone with an almost pathological fear of sport would agree to such a venture is beyond me, but I did it. Now, there’s very little at the Roaring Meg of note. The river would be a metaphor for the shopping ce...
Read more

Hoo-ray and up She Rises.

So much has happened since my last post in March that this blog risks sounding like an itinerary. The main news is that Hitchin Mostly Comedy will return in the summer at a new venue, the Queen Mother Theatre . The road to this decision was convoluted, though enough fell into place en route to leave me optimistic about this new start. The catalyst was a survey I ran via our mailing list a few months back, in which I asked, "If the club returned in the current climate, with tickets still around £15 (and with similar line-ups), would you still attend?"; the response to which, in simple terms, was a resounding yes. Nearly 250 mailing list subscribers responded in a single week, with around a hundred also taking the option to leave some feedback. And only two people were abusive, which counts as a win when you consider they posted their comments online anonymously. Imagine how many more insults we would have received if the comedy club was a woman. Particularly if she was Diane ...
Read more