Viva Brighton Issue #60 February 2018

COMEDY
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Samantha Baines
Renaissance woman
Comedian, writer, actress, pun-builder; it’s safe
to say Samantha Baines is a Renaissance woman
for our times. She brings the critically acclaimed
1 Woman, a High-Flyer and a Flat Bottom to the
Brighton Science Festival.
The show explores the lost women of science
– interwoven with silly stories from my life.
Margaret E Knight, an inventor, Lilian Bland, an
aviation engineer, and Sally Ride, an astronaut,
championed the way for women of the future.
Sally’s the most famous in the sense that there
are books about her. But in the British Library,
which houses 20 million books, Margaret E
Knight and Lilian Bland don’t come up when you
search for them. No books. You have to laugh at
the ridiculousness of the injustices
they faced.
Before Sally became
the first American
woman to go
into space, the
engineers at
NASA asked her
if 100 tampons
would be
enough. For seven
days. Obviously,
I have a whole
section on tampons
in the show! It’s also
incredibly sad that
Sally couldn’t be
open about her
LGBT status;
it only came
out after she
died that
she’d been in
a relationship with a woman for the past 20 years.
#MeToo is an amazing movement; society is
just becoming conscious of how many of us have
been made to feel uncomfortable at some point
in our lives for being who we are. But now we’re
realising how common it is, and are gaining the
confidence to say ‘No, I’m not going to put up
with that’. Once, I won a stand-up competition
against all men, but at the end of the gig, the promoter
in charge said to all the men (who I’d just
beaten), ‘I always remember the ones with the
big tits’. Everyone just laughed. But, the comedy
industry has been very supportive of people who
are brave enough to tell their stories - which is a
good thing.
When I first trained as an actor I had clear
goals - I wanted to be onstage at The National.
But life’s just taken a different turn and I
like being a ‘yes’ woman. I’ve gotten to do really
amazing acting projects like The Crown and Call
the Midwife, Silent Witness. I’m constantly told
I have a period face (not the Sally Ride-tampons-menstruation
one) – I definitely have 50s
hair! Wonderful women like Victoria Wood
showed us that you can be a comedian and a
dramatic actress and write comedy sitcoms and
do lots of things.
I was the first woman ever to be in the Pun
Championship finals, run by the Leicester
Comedy Festival. You’re asked to produce 100
puns and on the day you perform them, in a
boxing ring, in rounds. One of my favourites, on
dogs: ‘I’m trying to convince my husband that we
should get a dog and I’m doing it subliminally
through the wallpaper. I’m not going to lie, I’ve
got an all-terrier motif.’
As told to Amy Holtz
Komedia, Tues 13th Feb, 8pm
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