Brenda Monk Is Funny (32 page)

Sean West turned to her and offered his hand.

‘Hi, Brenda,’ he said stiffly, warily.

‘Hi, Sean. Good luck tonight.’

‘Thanks.’

He seemed nervous, and was it Brenda’s imagination, or was it her that was causing it? He was eyeing her now, as if she held some secret she wasn’t telling him. She realised once again the effect that semi-final gig was still having. That powerful, golden time on stage she had experienced had clearly freaked him out as much as it had her, though for different reasons. Sean West clearly thought Brenda Monk was the one to beat and that made her smile inside.

Barbara hustled them all backstage, and the house was opened. People streamed in, finding seats, mostly avoiding the front two rows on the assumption that they would be picked on. Brenda stood in the make-shift green room with Davey, Adil and Sean. They all now clutched drinks they were not consuming – a beer for Sean, a Coke for Adil, and water for Brenda and Davey – and were trying to control their nerves.

A previously unnoticed door at the far end of the backstage area marked ‘Fire Escape’ suddenly opened and John Nunn was ushered in by a small group of people. He walked over and, with the aid of a young woman holding two phones hovering next to him, quickly went round the group.

‘Sean West.’

‘Nice to meet you Sean, best of luck for tonight.’

‘Adil Nawaz.’

‘Nice to meet you Adil, best of luck for tonight.’

‘Davey Crockett.’

Slight pause. A joke instantly crossed John Nunn’s mind, but he wasn’t about to go giving them out for free.

‘Nice to meet you Davey, best of luck for tonight.’

‘Brenda Monk.’

He was trying to place her. She beamed at him to try to distract him. He frowned slightly and then stopped bothering to expend any energy on figuring it out.

‘Nice to meet you Brenda, best of luck for tonight.’

And with that done, John Nunn moved to a corner of the backstage area with his team and spoke quietly to them until the show began.

Frances had sauntered in with her fellow judges: Mark Johnson, a veteran TV comedy producer who had long battled depression and was not working much these days, and last year’s winner – a thirty-something comedian whose arrogance had led to a Messiah complex so strong he thought Jesus was him. The judges huddled to one side, and talked earnestly amongst themselves, enjoying the separation and the effect they imagined it was having on the competitors.

John Nunn was a different person on stage, of course – you would struggle to believe it was the same man. He bounced around, half-skipping, covering the ground as though it were nothing. People rocked with laughter as he flipped jokes high into the air, one after another, and let them fall onto the crowd like a warm summer rain.

Brenda felt a tingle as she watched him from behind the curtain. His fellow comedians may not be too impressed with the content of the material, but the skill, the precision, the control could not be denied.

Then suddenly Sean was on, and the competition began.

Brenda, being the only female, was on third again and was not going to examine the privilege too far. If there was another woman in the bill she wouldn’t have been guaranteed this happy spot in the running order and so what meagre advantage she did have, she did not feel bad for. Sean did an unbelievably good set. Brenda couldn’t remember it from the semi-final so it was all fresh to her. He did a great line in ironic metro-sexuality with a bit of left-wing politics thrown in, a couple of mentions of the
New Statesman
lest anyone mistake his intelligence and then he was off again, pumped and ready to drink that beer for real.

John Nunn was on for the second time now, the rain maker, flying higher than weather. And then Adil shuffled on to play the persona he had created for himself: a nervous Bangladeshi boy trying to make his way in this strange new world called Britain – he even put on a Bangladeshi accent. It was a fun device for essentially commenting on English culture, and here in Scotland it went down a storm.

Then John Nunn.

And now Brenda.

He said her name, she knew it was her name but it didn’t feel like her name. She was detached from herself somehow and as she performed the miracle of putting one foot in front of the other to reach the mic, she marvelled at the fact that she did not simply fall down like a doll. All her energy was compacted inside now, pregnant with jokes, and she had to work hard to get any power to the outermost limits of her limbs.

‘Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Brenda Monk. My dad didn’t want a girl, he wanted a Scottish TV detective.’

And so it began, as it always did, and seemed to continue of its own accord.

‘But no, I like my name now. It’s taken me a while, though. When I was a kid I hated it. Yeah, I went to a very strict Catholic convent school and the nuns hated having a Monk in the class, as you can imagine. The Priest didn’t mind it though, especially when I cut my hair very short. He taught me a lot about Jesus, I’ll give him that. And he taught me a lot about the value of very sturdy underwear. Lessons I still use to this day.’

A decent laugh, and she was finding their level. She was switched on now, the first joke the canary down the mine. She continually averted her gaze away from the judges’ chairs, but momentarily, unavoidably caught sight of Frances’s unlaughing face.

‘Fuck you,’ Brenda thought to herself, ‘fuck you and the donkey you rode in on.’

Brenda caught a man looking at his lap in the front row and turned her attention to him.

‘Oh sorry sir, you’re shaking your head. Did you not like that one? You’re not a priest yourself, are you? OK, good. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be paranoid but when you’ve had a Catholic school upbringing you get used to the feeling you’re being followed around by a man, scrutinising your every move, trying to make you do stuff you don’t want to do. No, not Jesus – Jimmy Savile. Was that a bit far? Did I go too far? I don’t want to upset anyone, that’s why I wear these red shoes, you see. If the gig goes badly, I can click them together three times and be back home. Or at least in Glasgow…’

This got a nice laugh, but Brenda was starting to feel uneasy. It was going a little too well, a little too smoothly, and something within her was saying there was an edge missing. Perhaps bringing in something more real would redress the balance… She mentally slightly rearranged her set.

‘Yeah, I once went out with a guy who loved woodwork. I came down one Sunday morning to find him whittling in the kitchen and I had to dump him right away. We’d been going out for three months and I never knew he whittled. But that’s what we’re like, isn’t it, us British women. We’ll shag someone for weeks before we even ask what they do for a living. I’d already slept with my last boyfriend twice before he asked me out for a drink. And I actually hesitated. You can put your cock in me, I thought, but don’t try and control me with a nice glass of Chablis, oh no.’

Big laugh.

She had them back now. Keep it relevant, she thought, this isn’t some art school crowd. They want proper laughs.

‘I should really deal with my issues though because I’m getting older and I need to think about finding someone half decent to procreate with. I don’t want a family, necessarily – it’s not very compatible with my life. I just want to have had a kid, you know, so I can join in. I don’t like feeling excluded and most people I know have had at least one so I think I ought to have one, you know, for slow days on Facebook. You know what I mean, when you’ve run out of Buzzfeed links with photos of weird Post-It notes people have left on fridges in communal houses or whatever, you can just post a picture of your kid in a funny T-shirt and take the rest of the day off. Yeah, that’s what I want. Now I’m thirty, I need to start thinking about it. I like getting older though, I do. The best thing about it, as a woman, is that you don’t have to lie about masturbation anymore. Honestly, remember at school, the women here know what I’m talking about…’ A quick glance at Frances – nothing. Stone Wall. Fuck her, fuck her, fuck her.

‘You know, at school, when a boy would accuse you of masturbating and you felt like the world had ended? But they talked about wanking endlessly, didn’t they? Well, the tables turn when you’re in your thirties. The men don’t want to be talking about wanking then, no they don’t. Tragic to still be wanking in your thirties – that’s what wives are for. No, but women! Women, oh yes, it’s our masturbatory golden age. If you’re not masturbating there’s something wrong with you. And the best thing is, if you don’t feel like it, you can tell yourself you’ve got a headache and just roll over and go to sleep. But I never knew until I turned thirty everyone was up to it. It’s like a silent society where full membership is granted on your thirtieth birthday and everyone starts talking about dildos and handing round Nancy Friday books.’

A lull.

Nancy Friday was perhaps too niche a reference, although she had heard female laughter and so she had split the crowd. She needed to reunite them now…

‘If you don’t know who Nancy Friday is guys, ask your girlfriend. And if you don’t have a girlfriend, find out who Nancy Friday is and maybe you’ll get one.’

A cheer from the women in the crowd – always a nice sound.

Brenda caught the eye of an amenable man on the second row who looked like he could take a bit of interaction.

‘Tell me, sir, do you know who Nancy Friday is?’

He shook his head bashfully.

Good, thought Brenda, relieved. She sometimes got it wrong.

‘OK, sir. I’m going to take pity on you. It’s porn for girls, that’s what it is, in book form. Yes. It’s feminist porn. I’m sorry to get political, but that’s what it is. I’m not political actually, not really, although I do find I’m definitely more politically engaged these days. You start noticing things more. Like for example, I was at home the other night and
Shrek
was on the TV and so I started watching it, and you know what? I used to love
Shrek
. I loved it when it came out, I really did, but now all I can see is a massive green racist.’

Ahh, her
Shrek
bit. It had been with her so long now, it felt like an old friend.

‘Hear me out. You remember
Shrek
. OK, it begins with all the displaced fairytale people coming to live in his swamp because they have been sent away from their land, so they are basically refugees from an oppressive regime subjecting them to torture. They are asylum seekers. Forget they’re from Fairytale Lane or whatever, imagine they’re all from Zimbabwe. But does that move Shrek? Oh no, no no no. Shrek actually does a deal with the leader of the oppressive regime that if he finds him a girl to marry, some captive young virgin to be bought and sold, he can get rid of all the fairytale refugees from his swamp, or what I like to think of as Kent. And this is happily ever after? I know he ends up liking them all, but seriously, he’s the main character. It’s like making a kids’ film with Goebbels as a sympathetic lunk who just wants to be loved. Although with Walt Disney you never quite know, do you? I mean, it’s right-wing propaganda, it is. If Shrek were alive in Britain today, he’d vote UKIP, I’m telling you. And then I started to think, my god, are there these right-wing subliminal messages in everything I have ever loved? I know, I bet you never thought you’d hear a lapsed Catholic say that… but maybe my upbringing has made me susceptible to it, though, which is a worry. Like when I was a teenager, my favourite book was
Pride and Prejudice
. Yeah, I know, I mean the clue’s in the title, Brenda.
Pride and PREJUDICE
. Am I just drawn to it? Without realising? I’d finished
Mein Kampf
before I realised it wasn’t all about one man’s love for his tent.’

Not Brenda’s favourite joke, but she had found it got a certain section of the audience back in the game so it stayed. She felt two men to one side who hadn’t laughed yet suddenly guffaw and realised its value once again.

‘And I read the other day that apparently people now think Jane Austen was racist because she basically ignored the existence of black people, and you know what? I never even noticed that, so what does that make me? A subconscious racist? As if I didn’t have enough to worry about with my conscious mind, turns out my subconscious is some kind of nineteenth-century slave owner. You can’t blame Austen though. She was a victim of time and geography. It’s not like she could have a week of winter sun in Sharm el-Sheikh every Christmas – I mean, have any of you been to Bath recently? If I lived in rural Hampshire and only went on holiday to Bath, I probably wouldn’t believe in black people either. But I loved
Pride and Prejudice
– feisty Lizzie Bennet, stroppy Mr Darcy – honestly, these days I can’t fancy a man unless he completely ignores me. Which is why my latest crush is the Pope. It’s that convent school again – they put a poster of him on the wall, for God’s sake, like he was George Michael. The thing about the Pope is he really does play hard to get, but I think I’m wearing him down. I’m very accepting of his transvestitism, and he doesn’t pressure me for commitment, so it kind of works. Except for the abortions. He doesn’t like those, does he? I mean, neither do I, of course, I’m not saying I’m a
fan
of abortions, I don’t think anyone is, whatever the Republican Party tells you, but what’s a girl to do? It’s the only downside of going out with the Pope – he just won’t wear a condom.’

A big, shocked laugh. Just the sort Brenda had come to love.

‘Thank you ladies and gentlemen, you’ve been great, I’ve been Brenda Monk, goodnight!’

And she was off and behind the curtain in four seconds to loud applause and John Nunn was back on introducing Davey Crockett.

Brenda’s ears were ringing. She had to check her watch to see that she really had done twenty. She felt uneasy though – sometimes a set can be too smooth. The magic she had experienced at the semi-final was not there. Though to the untrained eye the two gigs would be hard to separate, she knew, she knew in herself and she was worried she had been too slick. You needed a bit of edge to really push it to the next level. She didn’t want to lose that punch, that raw energy the reviews had pointed out after her double-gig with Jonathan.