Jo Enright
Jo Enright

This pint sized Brummie comedienne has been doing stand-up for over fifteen years but it's her TV work on That Peter Kay Thing, I'm Alan Partridge and Phoenix Night's that really catapulted her into the national conscience. After working with Chris Addison on stage and on the radio, she's now part of the cast for his new TV series 'Labrats'. Which also sees her once again work with one of the best comedy talents in the UK, Armando Iannucci. Greg Sammons caught up with Jo after her first ever performance at Greenbelt, in front of over 1000 festival-goers.

Greg: Jo, you just did a show about an hour or so ago, how did you think it went?

Jo: I think it went fine Greg, I think they enjoyed it. I was just saying to Tony the organiser that I was really surprised at how many people came and he asked me how many came, I said about a thousand. Then he said did they enjoy it? I said I think so. Yeah I think so and I was a bit like that. He said well you know what, if five hundred people enjoyed it then that's great. I think it's the biggest audience I've ever played!

Greg: Wow! O.K. You've done some pretty high profile stuff. People might be aware of you through radio or through TV. How did that all get started? I guess you've been doing stand-up for a while?

Jo: Yeah. I've been doing stand-up for about fifteen years, and it started because I did a degree in drama; although I don't think you need to do a degree to start stand-up. I think you just start stand-up really. I wrote five minutes of material and then went around pubs and venues that did comedy and tried that out and recorded myself doing it and basically built up some material over time. I gradually began to get paid for it and the rest is history; as the cliché goes.

Greg: I guess the drama degree came in useful, as you do act...sort of, you're very good at mimicking other voices and things like that. Is that something you could have done without a drama degree, or do you think it has helped you?

Jo: I think I originally wanted to do straight acting, I didn't want to do stand-ups. Stand-up was a way of getting an equity card. But then I got really interested in stand-ups and discovered that it was a real craft that I wanted to learn. What I realised was, the skills I'd learnt in acting I could employ in stand-ups and make my stand-ups quite theatrical: i.e. the voices, the story telling aspect of it. I realised that there was quite a power in being able to write your own material rather than wait around for auditions.

Greg: What auditions broke you into TV or radio? How did that come about? I think the first thing a lot of people might have seen you on was 'Phoenix Nights'. Did you do anything before that, am I missing something?

Jo: Not really. I did quite a lot of stand-up on television on shows like the Stand-Up Show and The Comedy Stall Presents, those types of things. Acting wise, I had done That Peter Kay Thing which was the series before 'Phoenix Nights', which was how I, sort of, started working with Peter. We met on the stand-up circuit. Then I did a character in that series and then from then I did 'Phoenix Nights'. No I didn't really do much acting before then. They were my first pieces. They were great: not great in the fact that I was great in them. I mean they were great things to do because the writing was good. They were great fun.

Peter did seem to do that. He just seem to find all his favourite acts on the circuit and just put them together and it seemed to work. There was none of the pretence that can sometimes come from the theatre world as well. It was just like let's just do this and do this to make ourselves laugh. We know this world and you couldn't really be too big for your boots because everyone knows you from the circuit and that was quite nice.

Greg: Yeah. I suppose you're all humbling each other aren't you?

Jo: Yeah, the writing was great, but you don't know how successful something will be. So, you know it's just another day at work really, isn't it?

Greg: Fun day at work?

Jo: Fun day, absolutely - Yeah.