Angela Barnes: 'One of my favourite venues to perform is in Yorkshire - all because of a cheeseboard'
Angela Barnes went to the University of Sussex in Brighton, and started running comedy nights in the city – and then, after working in health and social care, her performing career took off and has been a regular on the stand-up comedy circuit ever since.
She has appeared on shows as varies as The News Quiz, Mock the Week, The Now Show and House of Games.
She can be heard on many podcasts, and was once named as one of the hardest working comedians, having driven more than 30,000 miles, and played at nearly a 100 venues.
I’m currently reading
As a youngster, you couldn’t get me out of our local library, I always had my nose in a book, which really annoyed my dad, for some reason. He’d want me to do other things, but I loved my reading.
My favourites were all the Enid Blytons, the Roald Dahls, thing which were rooted in real life – or as real as I believed them to be, girls at school, youngsters having adventures.
I never warmed to things like The Hobbit, or The Lord of the Rings, or the Narnia (a real no-no!) series, because that involved sorcery and magic and wands and stuff, and those weren’t “real” for me, it was fantasy, cheating, stories helped along by magic.
My husband Matt is quite the reverse, he really likes stuff like that – give him Game of Thrones, and he’s away with it all and as happy as you can imagine.
As I speak, I’ve got a few books on the go, and one of them is Now Is Not The time to Panic, a really exuberant novel by Kevin Wilson, and another is The Formula One TV pundit Bernie Collins – I’ve always loved motor-racing, and her How to win a Grand Prix: From Pit Lane to Podium hit the nail spot on.
I’ve been listening to
A lot of power ballads as we drive up and down Britain for the tour. I’ve always loved people like Whitney Houston, AC/DC, Blur and Pulp – all of whom will tell you the generation that I grew up in.
Would it surprise you that the first dance at our wedding was Rainbow Connection, from The Muppet Movie, and sung by Kermit the Frog? It’s absolutely true, trust me.
On TV, I’ve been watching
Hardly anything, because I’ve been away so much, but I do admit occasionally retreating to a little personal comfort zone, and watching something like Inside No. 9.
Matt and I will catch up on Severance and White Lotus later in the year, and while I’m away from home, he’ll be wallowing in his sci-fi, no doubt about that at all.
I don’t watch much news, but I do always pick up the local paper, from the town where I’m appearing, and I have a scan of that, for contemporary issues and talking points. I do like to get to a town early, so that I can have a wander around, and get its unique flavour.
This tour will see me playing Bradford for the very first time, and I can’t wait, because two of my favourite venues are in Yorkshire – Pocklington, where they are so wonderfully friendly, and their Arts Centre is a dream gig, and Barton on Humber, where they always – don’t ask me why – always put on an amazing backstage cheeseboard for the guest artists.
I can’t wait to be booked back for both those places.
The live performance I’d recommend is
Blur appeared at a smaller venue in Eastbourne a few years back, and that was a special night for me, but if you ever see the name Marjolein Roberts as an up-coming gig for a venue, don’t hesitate for a second to go and see her.
She’s from Shetland (her accent is wonderful) and she’s a folk storyteller and comedian. A brilliant act.
My next boxed set or streamed series will be (or was….):
It must be a catch-up with Mad Men, the clothes, the fashions, the designs. Superlative period television.
The App I couldn’t be without is
Waze. I have a friend in Kemp Town, which is part of Brighton, and I have been to her house countless numbers of times – but without a guide on my phone, I couldn’t even begin to tell you how to get there.
The other apps are generally to do with means of getting some food after a show, and I have yet to get recommendations of the best places in Bradford for a curry.
What is right at the top of your “To do” Bucket list?
Meeting audiences after a show is always great fun – in Pocklington, we were booked into a local pub, and how we managed to get back there is another story.
Believe it or not, I have a great interest in the Cold War, and I even once did a show in a bunker near Edinburgh.
I’ve visited many others, including the one in York, which is fabulous, and the one I really want to see is in West Virginia, in the USA, which is so big that it was to house the entire American Congress in the event of anything kicking off.
Angela appears at Bradford’s Alhambra Theatre on Saturday September 13, The Ropewalk in Barton-on-Humber on October 12 and Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds October 13