As her new tour kicks off, the comedian talks starting stand-up, misogyny in the TV world and appearing on ‘Taskmaster’While panel and talk shows allow people to filter themselves, something about the idiosyncratic tasks – building a tower of tin cans while blindfolded, rolling a giant yellow duck into a lake without touching its beak – strips comedians back to their essence.
Beaumont entered the annual So You Think You’re Funny comedy competition with a collection of anecdotes. Beaumont’s act, like her sitcom, has always drawn on her own life – a crow landing on her head and a stranger sticking a Wagon Wheel to her forehead provided her first jokes. “It’s all real,” she says.
When she toured her 2014 show, interviewees constantly asked ‘Are women as funny as men?’ Beaumont says. “It got in my head. I had terrible self-doubt. It really affected me.” She changed how she presented herself. “I used to take my make-up off before I went on stage and put on a hoodie. If I didn’t, I was getting things shouted at me like ‘Get your tits out’. It just made me more and more nervous.