Higher profile competitions encapsulating nascent talent on prime time television appear to prove the theory – X Factor’s JLS are doing pretty well for themselves having come second to Alexandra Burke in 2008, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of heatthrob Olly Murs who came second to Joe McElderry in the 2009 X Factor, now that he’s also signed to Simon Cowell’s Sycho record label too.  Famously Liberty X outlived their rival winners Hear’Say in the 2001 ITV reality talent show Popstars.

Something about coming second or even thinking you should have won can have the desired effect on your career.  Talent can win out and never mind the persona.  Take a lesson from Susan Boyle’s experience of being pipped to the top spot – less is expected of you for coming second and you do have to wonder if Susan could have coped with the pressure of being number one.  She still has a multi million pound recording career at her finger tips and it gave talented dance group, Diversity a well deserved break.

The same has happened with the Funny Women Awards.  Sarah Millican, who missed winning the 2005 Funny Women Awards by a nano point, has gone on to become one of the most sought after new female comics on the circuit, winning the Amused Moose competition the same year as the Funny Women Awards and latterly being dubbed as the ‘best newcomer’ in the ‘Eddies’ at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

Only just four years ago we were struggling to fill a room in Sarah’s home town of Newcastle with a touring show of female comedy acts.  This is a real ‘if they could see me now’ story as Sarah has now performed to several million people with television appearances on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow and Mock the Week, plus her own series on BBC Radio 4.  Ultimately Sarah is the ‘winner’ because she’s living her dream, regardless of whether or not she won a competition.

And surely this is the point?  I run the Funny Women Awards to give women the opportunity to perform comedy without the jibes and prejudices they may encounter on the unremittingly sexist comedy circuit.  Although we have brought about a cultural change and it has become a different place from the circuit I first encountered eight years ago when I first launched the competition in 2003, some promoters remain resistant to booking female acts.  Plus, ironically, the hardest people to please are female audiences!  They tend to be the biggest critics of their own gender.

So how do we define ‘losing’?  For me it’s when we fail to sell enough tickets to cover our costs and, the biggest sting of all, when our much celebrated sponsorship with Nivea fell through just over a year ago at the first bite of the recession.  But that’s when the tough get going and necessity really is the mother of invention.  I had so many women wanting to enter the Funny Women Awards it had to happen and a last minute minor sponsorship deal on the final from Boots, just about made it pay.

But just when you think all this is acceptable, there is another sting in the tail.  Sponsorship, financial and in kind is still essential to keeping the Awards on the road.  Yet, my harshest critics from within the industry have derided Funny Women as a ‘PR stunt’, a remark linked to the fact that over a period of six years we have ridden upon a wave of successful brand sponsorships with Babycham, Sheila’s Wheels, Avon, Nivea and Boots with supportive contributions from BA and the Londa Hotel in Cyprus, who continue to provide a holiday as first prize for the Funny Women Awards and hosts our touring show.  Now we’re looking for sponsorship again but at least we’ve proved that we can survive (almost!) without.

I was even rather humiliatingly told by an established comic that she hoped that after five years there would be no more need for the Funny Women Awards as it ‘wouldn’t be necessary’ to encourage any more women to do stand up.  The implication being that there would be quite enough, thank you! 

Yet the odds continue to be stacked against female performers on the circuit who struggle for stage time.  We have a waiting list for our regular Second Sunday showcase night at the Leicester Square Theatre and our entry rate for the competition rises year on year.  We had over 100 registered for this year’s competition ahead of our launch.

Funny Women is surviving in restrained circumstances with the competition at its heart, and fueled by the lifeblood of new and innovative female comedy talent. Over 250 women participated in live shows during the run of the 2009 Funny Women Awards and we set off again in May taking in some new and wonderful locations as part of the drive to seek out the best new female comedy talent.

When I see great new female acts like Zoe Lyons, Susan Calman, Sarah Millican, Anna Crilly, Katy Wix, Sarah Pascoe, Andi Osho and our latest protégé, Miss London on the television, I feel pleased and proud that they’ve all graced the Funny Women stage along their way.  We are just a small part of their success, and it’s good to celebrate the emergence of new talent.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter about the winning or the losing.  It’s about making it happen.

 No, not another breast augmentation headline about Jordan, or the latest in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, but the latest gangster movie from the same writers as Dirty Beast, starring Ray Winstone. 

 Now this is the sort of film I know I need to see but am never sure I will like.  I wasn’t sure for the first 40 minutes which I spent (I admit) flinching at the frequent use of certain derogative feminine expletives but, by the end of the initial tirade, this became part of the film’s context and I was laughing along with the ridiculous humour of the language and the action.

 44 Inch Chest is part Beckett, part Berkoff in its composition – a staged piece of theatre on a screen.  In a nod to its genre, Steven Berkoff even makes a guest appearance as a slightly murky gambling associate of the devilishly gay Meredith, played brilliantly by Ian McShane of Deadwood and Lovejoy fame. 

 The tale is Chaucerian in its simplicity.  A cuckolded husband, a wanton wife and a young lover. The wife (Joanna Whalley) of lead character Colin (Ray Winstone), cheats on him.  You are in anticipation of an escalating display of violence in the style of Dirty Beast and indeed the action leads you in that direction. 

Colin found seemingly left for dead by his loyal mate, Archie (Tom Wilkinson) is beside himself with grief at his wife’s infidelity and the gang, dubiously drawn together by some clandestine and (we assume) criminal trade, decide on retribution.  The capture of Loverboy, his trial by the gang and the denouement, is peppered with colourful dialogue straight out of Derek and Clive and helpless inactivity by way of Steptoe & Son and Til Death Do Us Part. 

The action focuses around two main sets; the lead characters Ponda Rosa style suburban home and a scuzzy boarded up back street den with whisky stashed in a dirty kitchenette and an ominous wardrobe. 

The resulting theatrical event is masterful.  The whole relying on the exquisiteness of the individual performances.  If it doesn’t win an over all Award, there must be some for individual performances which are hard to single out. 

I particularly enjoyed the Steptoe-esque Peanut, (John Hurt) whose attempts at being ‘hard’ verge on pathos but who positions himself as a colourful raconteur when given to tell the story of Samson and Delilah, illustrated wonderfully with clips of the 1949 film featuring Hedy Lamarr & Victor Mature.  A master stoke which contrasted with Technicolor clarity against the bleakness of the ugly squat in which they had imprisoned their unfortunate prey.

Loverboy never gets to cut off his hair or bring down the temple and to tell you more would spoil the pleasure of the tale as it unfolds.  44 Inch Chest is a dark parable of our times, a journey through man’s inhumanity to man, an updated, ‘big boy’ version of Lord of the Flies, with one beautiful woman thrown in for good measure.  I loved it.

http://www.44inchchestfilm.com

As the mother of a 17 year old daughter and a 21 year old son, I have witnessed first hand the difference between male and female expectation, even though I’ve tried to give both my children a healthy, non-sexualised perspective of the world, as has my husband.  Not every child is privileged to have this balance and I would like to see the media taking steps to devolve attention away from the impossibly glamorous world inhabited by a seemingly alien race of thin, nipped, tucked, and airbrushed individuals.  You know – the world where everybody has a trout pout, inflated breasts and a permanent expression of surprise?  We may not believe it is real but if we promote it long and hard enough, the next generation just might. 

What has happened to getting an education, being interested in science and politics, or just good old-fashioned entrepreneurship?  Even they have to be garnished with the same sort of tinsel town magic to get page space.  Where is this virtual world where everybody is a celebrity and nobody ever grows old?  Even Susan Boyle has been plucked, slimmed and coiffed within an inch of her life just so that Simon Cowell can get even richer.  At least he’s an entrepreneur even if his commodity is fame and celebrity!

It’s time to start changing the culture.  It’s not enough to just be a pretty face.  I am not suggesting that we all start growing out our body hair and stop using deodorant but there is more to life than a regular leg wax and the latest Dove commercial even if it does feature ‘real women’… yeah, right.

The world is not the unblemished CGI’d version we see on our screens, both small and wide.  It has lots of warts and pimples and rather than cover them up we should be finding a way to bring the really ugly ones to a head.

Mass rape in the Democratic of Congo is not a myth – it’s ugly and real and happening every day.  Yet it doesn’t get the media coverage that the death of every British or American soldier in Iraq rightly generates.  Why is this?  Is it such a huge invisible problem that the world doesn’t know how to deal with it?

Why do women and children get duped and trafficked into prostitution?  Another unseen horror of our world today.  I know full well that stories about this sort of thing doesn’t sell glossy magazines but with the on-line accessibility of the worldwide web, maybe big titles could extend their hard pages into virtual activity to help to build bridges and counteract some of the on-line atrocities of our age with positive action.

Cultural change is aided and abetted by those things that reflect our various cultures – like media, music, art, film, theatre and sport.  My call to action is to get those big media brands and their owners together to see how we can start to rid the world of it’s ugliest ‘habits’ for death, destruction, rape and torture. 

No amount of make-up or six inch heels is going to protect a woman from a predator, but having an education and an opinion about something other than lipstick will at least give her self respect and at best open up a world where freedom and opportunity exist.