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Jen Brister is a sarcastic, bitter cynic. Luckily she’s also a brilliant comedian, a master of long stories and spot-on impersonations of life with her shamelessly overbearing Spanish mother.

On inspiration

A shamelessly overbearing Spanish mother, who, incidentally, thinks the routine is hilarious. “She loves it!” insists Jen. “And it’s all true. In fact, some bits I play down. The feelings about food, the directness, the loudness, the lack of self-awareness in certain public places… it’s all based on things that she has said over many many years.

“I’m trying to recreate that frustration within a few minutes, so I make her bigger than she is, but the essence of it, that is her.”

“When you have a Spanish, or maybe Mediterranean parent, they have a very different influence in your life, it’s suffocating. There’s a weird emotional blackmail thing going on too, all that Catholic guilt. I mean, Jesus.”

On cynicism

Is she always so negative? Did we just catch her on a bad day? “This is a good day!” Jen laughs. “I’m in a really good mood. You should’ve seen me yesterday…”

Comedy seems a strangely exposing route for someone so cynical. “It’s a series of back to back rejections,” agrees Jen. “You just have to clamber over and get going. So I think that plays a part in my cynicism, but I probably would be anyway. I just have that kind of personality.”

“I think my cup is just half empty, and I really don’t want anyone to fill it,” smiles Jen, before adding, unnecessarily, “Don’t fucking fill it. I like it that way.”

On the BBC

When she’s not performing stand-up Jen writes scripts with fellow comedian Clare Warde. “We’re working on sitcom script for the BBC at the moment” she says. But, realising she’s dared to be hopeful, she quickly adds, “but the likelihood of them going with it is probably quite slim.”

Jen is also an occasional radio presenter on BBC 6music. “I’ve been presenting on various shows and I love it,” she says. “At the beginning I was like ‘this is bullshit! I can’t say what I want to say!’ but I’ve learnt you can, if you’re clever about it. You can say a lot of things without saying ‘cuntingwankshitbollocks’.”

“I think I split a room with radio – people either really like me or they’re like ‘who is this fucking sarcastic cow’. But I don’t care, I really enjoy it.”

On meat, non-meat and lesbians

Jen might distance herself from her loud, direct mother, but she’s not so different really. As demonstrated in response to the simple question ‘are you a vegetarian?’

“Fuck that!” starts Jen. “I have no willpower or desire to not eat meat, or not drink alcohol. You know how some people don’t eat meat, or they don’t eat fish, or they don’t eat wheat, they don’t eat dairy, there’s always something that they don’t eat? I eat EVERYTHING. I eat everything, I like everything, bring it on. What’s that? ‘I don’t eat ducks because they’re sacred in my country?’ well, they’re not in mine. Bring on the ducks.

“True story, when I was young I told my mum I was gay, and she said ‘well it could be worse, you could be a vegetarian.’”

Well there goes the vegetarians’ support. What do lesbians think of her?

“I don’t always go down well with predominantly lesbian audiences,” claims Jen. “I think I self-sabotage a bit with lezzas, there’s a little part of me that goes ‘you’re going to hate me, and if you don’t, I’m going to make you hate me.’”

“There’s the self-sabotaging bit of me that enjoys watching people squirm.” Does she do that in relationships too? Jen, surprised, laughs loudly. “Maybe a little bit” she admits. “I do that in every aspect of my life I think.”

Of course, this is a self-confessed pessimist speaking. The lesbian audience at the York Lesbian Arts Festival certainly loved her, despite the gentle jibes thrown in their direction.

On being hated

But perhaps Jen Brister’s not paranoid. Maybe everyone really is out to get her. “A guy poured a pint of coke over my head once,” she says, matter-of-factly. “I offended his girlfriend. I don’t know how I did that, I just did a normal set.”

And there’s the Wikipedia thing: “Before I went to Edinburgh last year someone had changed one word. Instead of ‘Jen Brister did her degree at Middlesex university’ they changed ‘did’ for ‘failed’.”

And perhaps the most damning evidence of all – one bad review. The Mirror wrote that Jen was ‘the poor man’s Rhona Cameron’. To which Jen is surprisingly upbeat.

“I think that’s hilarious!” she smiles. “The gig they came to, I absolutely stormed it. I took the roof off. But the guy from the Mirror wrote that he thought I was the poor man’s Rhona Cameron. He was basically saying, if you want to see a dyke, and you can’t afford Rhona Cameron, go and see me.

“It didn’t really bother me when I read it. It was a really homophobic review, it didn’t make any reference to my comedy, it just made reference to my sexuality. But c’mon, it’s the Mirror! On the give-a-fuck-o-meter, I don’t care.”

On comedy

What and who does Jen think is funny? “I like it when people tell stories. I appreciate really good puns and really good gags, but if I go and see a show, I love big narratives, I love an arc to the show to keep me interested.”

“As for who’s funny… Sarah Silverman, she’s brilliant. But there’s also lots of great comedy in this country. I love Zoe Lyons, I think she’s great. I love watching Will Hodgson and the tales he tells. Oh, and Daniel Kitson, he’s a great comic.”

Is there anything off-limits when it comes to comedy? “Don’t talk about things that you don’t know,” says Jen. “If you’ve never had cancer, don’t make jokes about cancer. If you’re a straight white man, don’t talk about what it’s like to be a black woman. Those sorts of things are out of bounds.”

On bras

And finally, as part of the extensive research for this interview, we read on her Myspace ‘I do stand up comedy stuff, bit of radio stuff, bit of sketch comedy stuff… Erm…what else do you need to know? Bra size?’ So yes, we would like to know please. What is her bra size?

“36B. I’m working up to a C.”

Interview by Georgia Rooney and Milly Shaw

Jen Brister is performing with Zoe Lyons and Bethany Black at ‘Lesbilicious Comedy’, the North East’s biggest ever gay comedy event for LGBT people and their friends.

Lesbilicious Comedy takes place on Thursday 26 February 2009 at the Hyena Comedy Club, Newcastle. Doors open at 6:30pm, show starts at 8:30pm.

Tickets are £14, concessions £12, or £10 if booked before 6 February. Buy tickets from the Hyena website or call 0191 232 6030.

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