Judith Lucy is one funny lady, and after a few years away from the stage, wherein she wrote a tell-all book ‘The Lucy Family Alphabet’ about her family, she is returning to standup with some new material about the many, many joys of turning 40.
How was writing a book different from creating a stand-up routine?
My parents were really unusual people, they were Irish and pretty nutty. Dad wore a lot of makeup, I didn’t have my first shower until I was 15 because mom told me the shower was broken, which it wasn’t. Writing the book was very different from standup because obviously with standup the gag is king. It’s not like you can really take the time to give people background or explain why a person behaved the way they did. While I like to think parts of the book are very funny, it gave me the opportunity to slow down and write about my parents properly. That was my way of putting them to bed because I’m never going to talk about them on stage ever again.
You typically use very personal material for your comedy, do you have to get a bit of distance from your experiences before you can turn them into jokes?
It depends what it is. I used to do a routine about sleeping with a male prostitute and I didn’t need any distance from that, I was able to talk about that pretty quickly. I have done shows about my father dying and I’ve done shows about being adopted and obviously when they are difficult things to have gone through you really have to have gotten them worked out before you get on stage and try to make people laugh because audiences are like wolverines, they can really sense it. I remember after I found out I was adopted I got up and talked about it on stage probably only about a month after it had happened. I was still completely freaked out and I think you could have heard a pin drop. It was silence from the audience and that was because they knew I was trying to be funny about something I hadn’t dealt with at all.
Tell me about your new routine ‘Judith Lucy isn’t Getting Any Younger’. You were quite burnt out on stand up before the book…
Yeah, and I’m remembering why all over again! God, I feel like an old lady. I look back at when I used to tour when I was younger. I used to just get trashed every night, go out, sleep all day and do it all again. Now I just do the show, go back to the hotel, have a couple of wines, watch a movie and go to bed and I’m still exhausted…
My shows are generally just me banging on about whatever is in my head. I suppose it is my cliché, but there was something about turning 40 that made me just look at my life – my partner and I sold our flat, then we broke up, I decided I didn’t want to do stand up for awhile, you think about things like you didn’t have children. I cover all those things in the show, I talk about the bad, but I talk about the good as well because I think you get a lot more comfortable in your own skin.
What do you know now that you didn’t when you started standup?
I was still a virgin when I started doing stand up, so if I’m not a little bit older and wiser, then god help me is all I can really say! I’m a lot more comfortable in my own skin and I don’t think I’m making quite as many extraordinary errors in judgment as I did in my 20s and I’m also not drinking until I pass out every night, so I think these are all positive steps. I’ve gotten into yoga and meditation, so now I have a bottle of wine in one hand and a yoga mat in the other – so there’s a bit of balance there.
Forty, childless, spiritual and environmentally conscious – is Judith Lucy a lesbian?
The question I usually get asked is ‘why aren’t you a lesbian?’ Often I ask myself, ‘how did that not happen?’ I’ve given it a crack, I’ve kissed some lovely ladies over the years, but my genitals just won’t go there. One time my best friend and I, years ago, had five bottles of wine, we really gave it a go, but we both like sleeping with men. I’m afraid that’s the truth. I’m not necessarily happy about it, but that’s just the way it goes.
Megan Smith
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