By Lia Middleton, Third Year, English
Attention: Grace Campbell loves Bristol!
I chat with Grace over Zoom, midway through the tour of her latest show ‘The Lady Is A Tramp’ (which hits the Beacon on the 4th November), who confidently begins the interview by telling me “if I could live anywhere in the UK it would be Bristol or Glasgow”. Well, Glasgow aside, it’s great to hear Bristol acclaimed, and I immediately launch into discussing her new show.
“It’s the funniest show I’ve ever written”, Grace says, “very gag-heavy”. All set within a day, the show begins when a male comedian tells Grace that, in order to be taken more seriously, she needs to talk less about sex: “If you want to become mainstream, you have to be more palatable” is the premise. Grace then experiments by taking the audience on a mundane day with her, which quickly descends into her signature style of boisterous, confessional, self-satirical, anecdotal comedy.
At this point, the interview becomes a double one! Grace’s dog – a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Eddie, who I recognised from her Instagram – starts barking. “Sorry, she’s got ADHD just like me”, Grace says, taking me over to throw a ball for her. “She just needs to be stimulated all the time”. In a 2016 Guardian article, Grace once wrote entertainingly about how she got a prime ministerial order to support her childhood campaign for a dog: “Molly duly arrived.”
Grace Campbell
Grace Campbell had an unconventional childhood, to say the least. Born in 1994, for the first ten years of her life, her dad, Alistair Campbell (now of The Rest Is Politics fame), was at the forefront of Tony Blair’s New Labour government. With her mother, Fiona Millar, also working for Cherie and Tony Blair, Grace writes that ‘it was literally impossible to escape politics’, and that she was “born, quite literally, into New Labour”.
Despite (or perhaps because of) this entanglement with Westminster, Grace knew from an early age that she wanted to perform. Whilst directing at film school in London, she met a comedian who encouraged her to try stand-up and fell in love with it. “I loved it straight away; I just love performing. I love the feeling I get from being onstage, and my friends would just come with me to all my early gigs”, she says.
It strikes me just how much friendship and partying have motivated Grace’s career. She made her Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2019 with her show ‘Why I’m Never Going Into Politics’: a series of anecdotes from her reckless youth blended with political gossip. Coming off a summer producing at the Fringe myself, I eagerly asked her about this experience: “The Fringe… It’s hardcore, it’s intense”. I nod vigorously in agreement, eager for an artist's rags-to-riches narrative and ask if she did much of the producing herself too. “No, it was just so much drinking”, she replies. “I would just drink every day and go out really late, one long party”.
Now in her early 30s, Grace is having to adapt her lifestyle to accommodate the reality of getting older. “Just got to listen to my body a bit more, which is so boring. But if I have a big night, I don’t feel right again for at least three days; it’s so lame, but unfortunately true”. It’s the judgmental language of excusing yourself to your first-year flatmates, desperately explaining why you can’t go out another night in a row whilst trying to make them still like you. I wonder why partying holds such meaning for her: “Do you feel like partying a lot in your 20s was really key to your development?”. “Yes”, she replies, “I wouldn’t change anything. It was the best”.
But Grace is keen to prove her partying days are far from over. In Edinburgh this year, she tells me, "I did have like three 6 am nights, and then had to perform the next day and thought, ‘why have I done this?’”. Being hungover means that "it's like you just dread it [performing] all day”. I jump at this opportunity to connect with her, dispelling my own 6 am Edinburgh nights (well, in reality, just the one night) this summer. “How old are you?” she asks. “21”, I reply. “Oh yeah, you’ve got the energy”. I laugh, and she continues, “I remember once when I was 21, I did like an all-nighter and then did this shoot for the Guardian, and people probably could tell ‘cause I probably stank of alcohol, but I was so unaffected back then”. Given that Grace did her first show at 25, it makes me realise what a profile Grace already had before her performing career began. “Oh, I hate sounding like such a fucking cliché”, she says.
Grace Campbell
Grace Campbell
I told myself I wasn’t going to ask her about her famous father unless she brought it up - which she didn’t. With all the success she’s had, I wanted to interview her as a creative in her own right, uncover her artistic process and the passion that motivates her. I slightly regret that now, because her privilege feels like an elephant in the room the more I stew on this interview, and - to be fair - I didn’t give her explicit space to respond to that. But still, I wonder how you can situate yourself within a creative art form and not feel the need to talk about something more profound than partying so much it makes you dread performing the next day. Maybe there is something about growing up rich that means partying is a good enough life aim… Or maybe I’ve just been at Bristol Uni for too long.
Ultimately, Grace gives a platform to subjects that are often deemed too difficult to talk about for women. She has written truly fantastic articles for The Guardian that cover her experience with rape and abortion, rallying against shame, and asserting herself with an unapologetic hedonism usually reserved for straight men. In her words, “the best comedians are people who have a fresh point of view on things”, and “I have always really leant into things that people might shy away from in my stand-up”. Her authenticity is to her credit, and with four shows - including a sold-out headline show at the Hammersmith Apollo, a memoir, and several podcasts to her name - Grace clearly fulfils a sought-out voice in contemporary culture. However, I can’t help but wonder where her defiant, feminist message could be channelled if she ever discovers that partying lacks sufficient depth for a life plan.
Grace Campbell performs ‘The Lady is a Tramp’ at the Bristol Beacon on Wednesday 4th November at 7 pm. Buy tickets here (limited availability).
Featured image by: Eva Pentel
Have you got your ticket for the show?
