Lucy Porter: I’ve gone into comedy to become a Brown Owl, to tell people to do their best

Now, Porter is coming to the Edinburgh Fringe, and is set to tell of her life via Brownie badges. It’s a clever idea, to relate your past to a set of sewn-on achievement labels and offers a chance to reflect on personal development and, more importantly, to consider how our impressions change over time.

What of the Brownies? Was she initially happy to be institutionalised and made to wear a uniform of the worst colour imaginable? “Yes, and this is what the show is really about,” she says, smiling, while speaking faster than Lewis Hamilton can take a hairpin.

“It’s about my shifting attitudes, from being a keen Brownie to a cynical Guide who couldn’t really understand what all this quasi-fascist semi-religious nonsense was all about.

“And then came the inevitable discovery that I needed something to do. And there was a Scout hut at the end of the road. And suddenly I had revised my opinion of what the Guides and the Scouts was really all about.”

Lucy Porter was born in Croydon, South London and studied at Manchester University. Her first stand-up performance was at a club in Chester, based on the belief that if it went badly, she was so far from home no one would know her.

But it went well, backed by friends of the time such as Johnny Vegas, and she went on to work for Caroline Aherne on Mrs Merton. As well as appearing on a range of panel shows, Porter is also an actress, having appeared alongside Christian Bale in a West End production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in. She has also earned her badge in Playwriting. And Cynicism?

“This is one of the themes of the show,” she says, grinning. “I began my life with no cynicism, cultivated a great deal of it and now I’m asking myself where I stand on the cynicism spectrum.

“The genesis of the show was I don’t want to talk about Brexit. So my way of dealing with not talking about it is thinking of the concept of Brexit preparation, the attitude of some who suggest ‘It will be fine. We will just wing it.’ But actually, it won’t be fine, and you can’t wing it, anymore than you can a Fringe show in Edinburgh.”

She adds; “This made me think about the Brownies, the edicts, the ideas of preparedness, trying your best. And I’ve been thinking perhaps there is something in all of that. You can’t just improvise your way through life, which is what politicians are now doing and I’ve done. The show is full of examples of times when I should have been more prepared.”

She laughs as she throws out a few for size. “There was the gig I turned up at without realising it was a literary event, and I was supposed to have read two novels and be ready to interview the authors about their work. But I hadn’t read the email properly, and so had to wing it.”

That was all a bit Boris, wasn’t it? “Exactly!” she agrees. “And there was the time I was asked to go on a radio programme and talk about the life of Cary Grant, whom I’d loved as a movie star. But rather than do extensive research, I just read his autobiography and watched a couple of his movies. Then I turned up to recording and was hit by the question; ‘Lucy, as a self-proclaimed feminist, I wonder why you chose to talk about the life of a violent, misogynistic wife beater?’ But they don’t mention that in autobiographies, do they? A little more research may have spared my blushes.”

How did she cope with that disaster? “Well, I became brilliant at back pedalling and disassociating myself from Cary Grant. But that’s the thing about stand-up. It teaches you improvisation and people love it when you slightly screw up on stage. Although it’s not fine when you’re off stage. On radio. And it’s not fine for politicians.”

We return to the Brownies and the idea of order. “It was semi-militaristic of course and you had to pledge allegiance to God and the Queen. Now, that was a little bit difficult for my dad who was a Northern Ireland Catholic Republican, but my mum liked the idea of me earning badges and going camping, and it meant a child-free weekend every now and then.”

Porter did rebel at times against the preachy bits. “If there had been a branch of the Woodcraft Folk near me I’d have signed up for that. But it is the inevitable consequence of age that you come to think, ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind if someone actually knew what they were doing in this world.’ I haven’t lost my faith in experts and the Guides and Scouts do have those when it comes to the outdoors. In fact, Bear Grylls is the Head Scout, although in the show I’m quite scathing about him.”

Why? Not the nice cuddly Bear, surely? She grins; “Well, he sort of reminds me of the boyfriends I had who I thought I should go out with because they were so capable and competent and outdoorsy, but of course we weren’t compatible.” She adds, smiling; “I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say I sort of soften towards Bear at the end of the show.”

Did she get many badges as a Brownie? “Yes, I got the Entertainer badge, which I got for telling jokes, which, given it was the Eighties, were probably stolen from a highly offensive Jim Davidson Christmas special. Or it could have been a Dave Allen impersonation.”

Porter grew up enchanted with the likes of Dave Allen’s natural style. She admits to being a comedy nerd, but at 16 wanted to become a journalist and follow in the bootsteps of Kate Adie.

However, at university she had a rethink. “I realised that everything I wrote seemed to make people laugh. I thought, let’s make a virtue of that weakness.”

She’s enjoyed having fun with writing about the Brownies. What other badges did she secure? “I got my Hostess badge, which involved making cups of tea for old people. I didn’t get the nerdy badges, the likes of Radio Communication. And I certainly didn’t get Horse Riding, which was for girls with rich parents.

“But then again I wasn’t pressured to gain too many badges because I realise now (as a mum of two) my mother wasn’t too keen on sewing them on.”

Did the Brownies and Guides help with an entry into the tough world of stand-up? Did it help instil stoicism? “Yes, it does teach you resilience. And to deal with challenges.” And other people? “I try and keep my interaction with other to a bare minimum, but yes. And it was a world of achievement, with encouragement to get your badges. And politically, it was a lot more socialist than I’d imagined at the time. Everyone was treated equally.”

She adds; “Nowadays, it’s so positively woke. All the badges are things like Recycling. My kids are doing Disability Awareness this week, and there’s a Speaking Out badge. It seems now that a one-time ‘right-leaning ’ organisation is now a radical voice for progressive change.”

Do young women need encouraging into comedy? “I don’t know, because I’m so old (46) and out of touch. But I do feel we’ve come a long way. And young girls can even be Cubs these days.”

But what of camping? Did she discover it to be more about identifying and discovering the opposite sex than identifying eight types of wild flowers? “Oh yes. That’s what I loved about camp. And I soon learned that what goes on in the woods, the creeping into tents in the middle of the night, stays in the woods.”

Porter, it seems, earned lots of badges after the Brownies. For Acceptance, for example. Is the story true that during her student days she lived in a squalid flat, and outside her little Mini Metro was used by local teenagers as a sex den? “Yes! it was like a local youth centre on wheels. It was used and abused. They’d also take it for rides and eat fish and chips in it.”

And Basic Survival? Kevin Bridges says he once went back to his digs after a gig and burst into tears. Has stand-up ever been that bad for you? “Oh, yes,” she says in emphatic voice. “You only need one bad gig to send you into a pit of despair. It doesn’t take too much to make you think you’ll give it all up and become a midwife.”

She recalls one such moment. “I remember once doing a university gig and we were staying at the student union officer’s flat. But the other comic I was sharing the bill with had got off with someone and I was supposed to sleep on this filthy sofa surrounded by beer cans, filthy ashtrays and after-show party paraphernalia. But it stank. I couldn’t sleep and I had to listen to the other comic having noisy sex with the student union officer. There was no upside to that.”

She doesn’t regret not going the Kate Adie route? “Mmm. A little. But it would be wrong to go through your life with serious regrets. And I’m glad this is what I do.” Porter adds, with a grin; “At least nowadays I have a bed for the night. Although, clearly there has to be something wrong with you, a mish-mash of flaws and insecurities, to want to become a stand-up in the first place.

How does she balance comedy life with the personal? (She’s married to comic actor Justin Edwards). “It’s an absolute disaster,” she says, with a wry smile. “I’m forever phoning the neighbours and friends asking if they can pick the kids up from school, or if they can keep an eye on them for 15 minutes. They save me. And the number of times I’ve sat up all night trying to make a World Book Day costume, because I’ve forgotten and we’re two disorganised performing comedy types.”

A Brownie badge in Perfect Mothering hasn’t been earned yet. “We want our children to have more of a calm, ordered organised life. Less chaotic. But who knows?” She grins; “My daughter will be delighted if I tell you I set off to school the other day without her. If you’re headed to school the key thing you need is a child. I had locked her in the house and hadn’t realised it. But the amazing thing she wasn’t even fazed. She just knows what I’m like.”

Porter pauses to weigh up her life and career choice. “I’ve been thinking more recently about why people go into comedy. Some want to be like rock stars, and get off with people. Some want to be preachers, to tell others how to live their lives.”

Her voice becomes a little Joyce Grenfell. “But I think I’ve gone into comedy to become a Brown Owl, to tell people to do their best, work jolly hard - and just be rather proud of themselves.”

Lucy Porter: Be Prepared, the Pleasance Cabaret Bar throughout the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 31st July to 17th August 2019. For tickets visit www.edfringe.com / www.pleasance.co.uk