Published: Thursday, 8th May, 2008 08:05
Gina tonic
By Lucy Thorne
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GINA Yashere’s weight loss has a central role to play in her latest tour – having ditched her former title of Fat B*tch, she is committed to keeping the pounds off.
Known for her straight talking and bolshy stand-up, it is no surprise she wants to talk about her annual pilgrimage to a Thai spa, which saw her have her “inside sucked out through her backside” twice a day.
Speaking from the States, she said: “It’s seven days where you consume nothing but liquids and have colonic irrigation twice a day. It is a really good and effective way to lose weight. I lost one stone in a week.”
But losing weight also meant Gina had to ditch a large proportion of her material.
She said: “I used to do a lot of stuff about being overweight and going to the gym, but since losing the weight I lost around 20 minutes of material, so I have replaced it with stuff about colonics.”
It is not only her weight loss that will make an impact in her latest tour.
She said: “I find my material in different ways – it can be something I am passionate about or something that has come out of a conversation.”
Her move to America has been hard work and seen her back at the bottom of the comedy pile, but the experience has fuelled her new show.
She said: “It’s going very well out here, I was the first Brit to do Def Comedy Jam.
“Americans expect all British comedians to be white middle-class Oxbridge males or like Ricky Gervais and Monty Python.
“I don’t have that typical British sense of humour. It is my own style and I think that is why my stuff transfers so well, although I have had to make a few concessions.”
She added: “I’ve had to change my intros. In the UK I’m known so I can just step out on stage but in the US they are quite insular and ignorant – black people don’t know there are black people in England. When I step out, they are thinking, this woman is black, she looks like us but she’s speaking in a weird accent. I keep getting mistaken for an Australian. So I have to acknowledge that there are black people all over the world.”
Gina has also had to slow down her speech and annunciate, so the US audience can understand. She said: “I have got a lot posher since I moved to America, when I come back to the UK I plan to return to my normal speech pattern.”
Although she loves the LA sunshine, Gina confesses her move to the US has meant a lot of sacrifices.
“I am earning a tenth of what I was earning in the UK and it was a big risk moving here,” she said. “Not everyone can come over here and do what Eddie Izzard or Russell Brand did.
“You have to go out, and start from scratch.”
She added: “I have to get on stage with other comedians, some are rubbish. But because I am trying to find my way, I have to start at the bottom. It is different not being known and I have to fight to get on bills.
“It is quite good starting again, and being the new kid on the block. In the UK I was taken for granted, I had done a lot of work on TV but never did my own stuff.
“It is more of a buzz here. In the UK there are a lot of comedians and there were ‘Mini Mes’ popping up all over the place but in the States I am fresh. I am always writing stuff and trying out new material.”
Before her comedy calling, Gina was a lift engineer.
She said: “I have always been naturally funny. I used to watch comedy on TV but it was never something I thought I would do.
“Engineering is something I was always interested in. I worked on building sites, as the only woman, and there were no female toilets.”
“As a female comedian you are not given as many chances as male comics. When you go on stage you have to be funny straight away.
“You have to prove yourself very quickly and it makes me work a lot harder and I am a lot better as a result. When a woman has the stage, the audience think they will not be as funny as a man. I like proving that I am funnier,” she said.
Gina is known for her TV appearances on the Stand-Up Show, Celebrity Fame Academy and Jo Brand’s Hot Potatoes but live stand-up is where she made her mark.
She said: “TV fuels my stand-up. I love doing live stand-up, you get to do big shows and talk for a long time. In the UK you can make a very good living in the comedy clubs but in the US playing the comedy clubs is related to your TV profile.
“To do well you have to be on TV.”
Gina is also a self-confessed gadget freak.
She said: “Japan is the best place to pick up things – I got a weird phone that no one had ever seen or has ever seen since.”
Her latest purchase, a Sling Box, allows her to record TV in her LA apartment and then watch it anywhere in the world on her laptop.
She said: “It means I can control the TV from wherever I am and watch anything I’m missing because I am away from home.
“Now I can sit in a hotel in the UK or Seattle and be watching Dexter from my box in LA. It was only about £80 and is amazing.”
For the tour Gina has picked 15 of her favourite towns, including Reading. She said: “I have played in Reading a number of times, it is a smaller version of London.
“This tour is much smaller, my last UK tour was around 50 venues, but I have picked 15 of my favourite towns and cities and Reading is obviously one of them. I will look through the local papers to get some fresh material for the show and take a drive through some of the crappy areas to get a bit of inspiration. It’s important to make the show fresh.”
She added: “I will be doing what I do best. I will be hilarious. People should come and see me as they don’t know when I will be back next.”
See Gina at Reading’s Concert Hall next Saturday (May 17). For tickets call 0118 960 6060.
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