Comedy

Suzie was finding it hard to disguise the fact that she was actually made out of bread

Suzy Bennett
Sell your act in a line... 'Shut up, everybody! She's good. She won a holiday. So there!'

Age 30.

Manor Woolwich.

Who is she? Bennett’s entire stand-up career amounts to just 16 gigs. At the seventh she won the Funny Women new act award (and with it a holiday in Cyprus). That was in July.

For a comic who’s done so little, she shows remarkable confidence on stage, cracking jokes about being single, blokes and pulling (or not pulling) them, Brazilian waxings, vaginal cones, chlamydia. ‘Girly stuff. Things I know. I don’t know much about politics or religion.’
It goes back to when she was seven or eight and delighting friends and family with impressions of Kenny Everett and Margaret Thatcher. She left school at 16 (‘I’d discovered cider’) and ended up waitressing in the officers’ mess at HMS Drake in Plymouth: ‘I liked the uniform.’ She swapped it for a Butlins redcoat when she landed work at the holiday camp in Minehead for six months. ‘Sheer frustration. So old-fashioned. They didn’t want any of the women as compères.’ Feature continues

From there it was on to three seasons with Thomson Holidays as a family entertainer in Tenerife, Majorca and Lanzarote. ‘Sketches, singing, dancing. The greatest job ever.’ Then a stint as compère at a private cabaret club called Moonlight Bay in Lanzarote. Then back home to England for a spell as receptionist at a Plymouth casino. In 2004 she was a dresser on the musical ‘Jailhouse Rock’ in London.
It was only when she sought out ‘like-minded people’ by taking a stand-up course at the City Lit that she touched base with the normal pattern of experience for those setting out as stand-ups.

Bennett hasn’t quite abandoned her knack for acquiring diverse employment. Since last October her day job has been working as a ‘guest experience host’ at Madame Tussauds (‘I show people around’). She’s aware that she’s not performed as often as she might. ‘I think I might be a bit lazy. Or a bit scared of doing the clubs and pubs.’ She’s also looking to lose the Plymouth accent. ‘I can’t stand it. I think it makes me sound like a simpleton.’

Worst gig Five days after winning the Funny Women award, she performed at a festival in Finsbury Park. ‘They didn’t boo me. They just went very quiet.’

Favourite comedians Dawn French (‘She’s from Plymouth too and I wrote to her when I was feeling disillusioned at Butlins’); Victoria Wood, Peter Kay, Jason Byrne and newish stand-up Ed Aczel (‘I’m grooming him to join me in a double act, except he doesn’t know it’).

Favourite London clubs The Comedy Store: ‘I enjoy going to the Gong Show. I couldn’t do it myself. I’d be gonged off in a few seconds.’

Look out for Her appearance in the Funny Women night at Turnmills on September 29.