“I SAID, ‘I’m Tracey Ullman. I’m not blonde. I don’t have big breasts. I will not wear a bikini. I don’t want to be the butt of sexual jokes. I don’t want to be a sexy traffic warden. I want to do equal stuff with the guys.’”
This is how Ullman sold herself to the BBC before her first big hit comedy sketch show, Three of a Kind, back at the start of the 1980s. Speaking to Lauren Laverne on Desert Island Discs last Sunday, Ullman says she knew from the start that she didn’t care for how British comedy treated women in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s why she moved to America.
“I realised that women had been given a shot in American comedy much more so than in English comedy. Lucille Ball had her own show in the fifties and then people like Carol Burnett had a wonderful variety show in the sixties and Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live, the wonderful Gilda Radner.”
So off she went and became a star over there, nurturing The Simpsons in passing. “I breastfed the yellow people,” she told Laverne gleefully.
Ullman made for good company, talking of her days in the Dougie Squires Second Generation (there’s a Proustian madeleine for anyone old enough to remember the 1970s), her nights partying in Cold War Berlin long before the Wall came down and of falling for her husband Allan McKeown and then losing him.
Throughout she would constantly break into impersonations because that’s what she has done all her life and may be the reason that she doesn’t get more to do as a serious actor, or a serious comic actor even though she’s so good at both. (For a while she was a regular in Woody Allen comedies back when he was still vaguely amusing and not quite a social pariah, but her best role may be in John Waters’ funniest, filthiest film, A Dirty Shame).
Read More: Julia Bradbury on Women's Hour
Oh, and her taste in records was pretty impeccable. Earth, Wind and Fire, Elvis Costello, The Waterboys and a lovely skit by Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Which takes us back to where we came in.
We think we’re great at comedy in the UK but it’s only in the 21st century that we seem to have recognised that women can be more than background detail. Or that smart comedy doesn’t need to have an Oxbridge accent.
But that’s another ball game and we don’t have room here …
Comedy can be stupid too, of course. And maybe not always intentional. Ask ex-Celtic and Blackburn Rovers player Chris Sutton.
Thrilled as I am by Stirling Albion’s start to the season (Come on you Binos), my footballing loyalties are mostly south of the border, so I’m more likely to tune into The Monday Night Club on 5Live than Sportsound on Radio Scotland.
After the misery of the North London derby on Sunday I wasn’t rushing to tune in this Monday night, but habit is habit and at least I got to hear Sutton’s gloriously ridiculous take on how the arrival of Ronaldo at Manchester United has put his team mate Bruno Fernandes’s nose out of joint.
(This is the edited version. Also, imagine it perfumed by the laughter of Micah Richards throughout.) “Go back a couple of seasons and Manchester United were a bunch of average goldfish in an average fish tank," Sutton began. "But then what happened was they invested in a fish that was a little bit different. An upgrade. We could call Bruno a Neptune Grouper if you like.
“So, Bruno the Neptune Grouper, he raised the standards. He made the fish tank a happier fish tank. He swam around that fish tank with a huge smile.
“But then all of a sudden what happened is they signed Ronaldo the polka dot Stingray from Italy, who was a bigger fish.
“Ronaldo the polka dot Stingray goes into the Manchester United fish tank and Bruno isn’t the same, I’m afraid.”
After a beat Mark Chapman summed it all up. “That’s three minutes of our life that we’ll never get back.”
Listen Out For: Poems for Thought, Radio 2, Thursday, all day. Radio 2 is marking National Poetry Day with a poet reading an original work in each of their daytime shows. Jackie Kay is on with Ken Bruce, Hollie McNish with Jeremy Vine and the wonderful Liz Berry makes an appearance on Sara Cox.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here