Brenda Monk Is Funny by Katy Brand Page A

so it doesn’t apply to me.’
    Brenda laughed in spite of herself.
    ‘Look, Brenda Monk, I’m not here to split you and Jonathan Cape up. I just saw his show and I thought, I’d like to meet this woman. And now here you are. If you’re happy with what he’s doing – if he’s convinced you that you are part of some important art project and you believe it, then that’s your business. I just think if he needs you that much for material then maybe it’s you that should be onstage. You perform you and let him figure out how to fill the gap, you know?’
    Brenda drank her cider and looked at the cobbled ground, trying to keep calm. This was a giddying new perspective, and not one that had been terribly forthcoming from Jonathan’s group of comedian friends. Linus had ineptly hinted at it once, but the integrity of his concern was slightly undermined by the fact that he was clearly trying to brush her breast with his knuckle as he spoke. Fenella looked straight at Brenda.
    ‘Am I freaking you out?’
    ‘A little.’
    ‘OK, well, forget I said it then. What do you do?’
    ‘I’m a journalist. I write pieces on women in media, mainly. And I review comedy for fun for online blogs and stuff like that.’
    ‘So you’re a writer then.’
    ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
    ‘How far would you go?’
    Brenda started to feel that Fenella was possibly coming on to her. She shifted slightly in her seat, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
    ‘I’m not a lesbian, Brenda Monk, so don’t panic.’
    You can’t hide anything from a comedian at the top of their game, Brenda reminded herself. They read micro-signals like Derren Brown and if they don’t expose your thoughts out loud it’s because they are choosing not to. She uncrossed her arms self-consciously.
    ‘I wasn’t panicking.’
    ‘OK. Not every comedian you meet will want to fuck you, you know.’
    ‘No, it’s just you don’t meet the 1% very often.’
    Fenella laughed.
    ‘We do exist in a world of priapic schoolboys, it’s true.’
    Brenda noted the ‘we’ and liked it.
    ‘It’s not even flattering in the end. You realise that with some of them you only have to be warm and wet and you’re in. I mean, where’s the struggle?’
    ‘Oh you like a struggle?’ asked Fenella.
    ‘Once you’ve picked all the low hanging fruit, what’s left?’
    Fenella nodded and drank half a pint in one mouthful.
    ‘My round,’ Brenda said and rose to go to the bar.
    Standing at the bar, looking back at Fenella who was now studying her phone and trying to look inconspicuous, Brenda had a chance to consider their conversation.
    She hadn’t met a real woman comedian before. She had met female comics who talked loudly and crudely to impress their nihilistic male colleagues, but she had always found their noise jarring. The brash confidence hid insecurity and a need for the approval of men that was off-putting to Brenda, and depressing too. Jonathan had accused her of being an unsisterly bitch when she had hinted at her misgivings so she had never raised it again. But Fenella was quite different. She seemed genuinely confident. It was calming rather than spirit rattling. Brenda had met female journalists through work who had this same aura, and admired them, was drawn to them, but never until this moment had she seen it in the female comedians she had met. She knew they were out there but they didn’t hang around with Jonathan and his friends and so she had almost decided they didn’t exist. She had always assumed it was the women’s loss. Jonathan and his friends were, by their own assessment, at the cutting edge of stand-up comedy and anyone who didn’t want their company must therefore have sold out or couldn’t hack it. This was the received idea Brenda had been carrying around inside her for a year now, since she had been admitted to the inner sanctum. But this crack of the new reality was widening a little and she felt at some point she might have to decide