Viva Brighton Issue #46 December 2016

COMEDY
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Harriet Braine
The fine art of stand up
“What the world needs is
something big and silly” says
Harriet Braine, from a hotel
in Vienna where she has been
on holiday running between
Klimt and Schiele, thinking
up new songs.
Harriet spent nearly five
years studying art and art
history at Edinburgh, which
formed the basis for her
alternative career, as a singersongwriter
who sets new
lyrics to popular tunes.
She can write her own music and occasionally
does, notably for a student musical called The Big
Diamond, but it was for her skill with the ancient
art of burlesque that led to her big break, when
she caught the attention of ‘Funny Women’.
This leading female comedy community was
created in 2003 in order to help women perform,
write and do business with humour. They crisscross
the country, auditioning over 2,500 hopefuls
in hundreds of heats. 2016 Awards touched
down in Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester, London
and Brighton. Harriet won Best Newcomer.
I talk to her soon after her victory. Her advice
to wannabe comedians is simple. “Go for it, full
throttle and don’t play safe”. Her favourite role
model is Victoria Wood.
Harriet was born in 1991 in Kingston upon
Thames, Surrey. Her mother was a designer and
her father a keen amateur musician who encouraged
her to play on the ancient family piano. She
chose to study at Edinburgh University as they
offered a combined Fine Art and Art History
course: she passed her
degree and remained
a further year to do a
Masters.
“After our course, we organised
an exhibition and
decided to have a party.
We played games with art
and I started singing silly
songs about art history
set to popular tunes. I
remember something
about ‘Matisse, Matisse,
Matisse, you cut things
up and stick them down/you weren’t so keen on
the colour brown’ all to a Dolly Parton tune. It
seemed to go down rather well. I do a trumpet
impression, which helps, and I can sing in a joke
German accent for Bauhaus stories.”
In the few months between graduation and getting
a job at the Maritime Museum in Greenwich, Harriet
had time to write more songs. Her ambition
now is to play at ‘bigger and better gigs,’ and she is
already attracting wider professional attention: she
was recently commissioned by the BBC to write a
piece for their 100 Women season.
Harriet accompanies herself on the guitar: no
backing track could be sufficiently flexible to accommodate
her comic interventions and trumpet
impersonation. “Writing lyrics comes naturally
to me”, she says, “but they need the music to be
funny.”
Louise Schweitzer
Harriet Braine is appearing in Charity Chuckle,
raising funds and awareness through stand-up
comedy: Komedia, Wednesday 7th, 8pm
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