Josie Long

Josie Long
Josie Long performing at the Green Man Festival, 2010.
Born	(1982-04-17) 17 April 1982 Orpington, Greater London, England
Website	http://www.josielong.com

Josie Long (born 17 April 1982) is an English comedienne.

Background

Long spent her early life in Orpington, South East London, where she attended Newstead Wood School for Girls in Swift House. She began performing stand-up comedy at 14, winning the BBC New Comedy Awards at the age of 17. At 18 she gave up stand-up whilst she read English Language and Literature (BA (Hons)) at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, though she ran experimental comedy clubs while at university. In 2007 she lived in Peckham Rye and currently lives in Hackney.

Career

After graduating from Oxford, she returned to live stand-up, supporting Stewart Lee on his spring 2005 tour.

She has contributed sketches and one-liners to BBC Radio One's 2004/05 comedy show, The Milk Run with Andrew O'Neill. One edition of the show was entirely given over to a script she co-wrote with her friend Dan Harkin, entitled The Adventures Of Marco Polo.

In 2005 she began publishing a fanzine, Drawing Moustaches In Magazines Monthly Magazine (Bi-Monthly), which is distributed for free, and has featured contributions from Robin Ince, Kevin Eldon and Stewart Lee, as well as Danielle Ward and Isy Suttie.

She appeared in the show An Audience With Dan Nightingale & Josie Long with Mancunian comic Dan Nightingale, at the Café Royal, at the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe. In 2006 she won the If.comeddies Best Newcomer award at the Fringe for her show "Kindness and Exuberance". In her 2007/2008 tour Trying is Good her act often involved drawing a sea scene on her arms and stomach. Long has a love of applique and the V&A Museum, and live Boggle contests sometimes form a part of her performances.

She has performed three solo shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and performed three subsequent UK tours in spring 2007, 2008 and 2009. She has appeared at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (2007–09), the Adelaide Fringe Festival (2008), the New Zealand Comedy Festival (2008) and the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival (2008). Her show, "Trying is Good" was nominated for the Barry Award in Melbourne 2008. In 2009 she toured her show 'All of the Planet's Wonders', playing 14 dates during February and March. Her radio series Josie Long: All of the Planet's Wonders was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in early 2009.

Along with fellow comics Hils Barker, Steve Hall and James Sherwood, she founded the All-Singing, All-Dancing Competitive News Bonanza, a live topical panel show that ran at the Red Lion pub in Soho, London in 2004/05, and at the Arts Theatre Club in Soho in 2006. In 2006 she also launched her own monthly comedy clubs, the Sunday Night Adventure Club, at the ABC Café in Crystal Palace, London (later at the Black Sheep pub) and the OK Club at the Boogaloo pub in Highgate, North London.

Long has written for the Channel Four teen comedy-drama series Skins. She has also appeared in an online webisode and episodes five and ten of the second series of the show, in which she plays a college careers advisor, and appears again in episode 5 of the third series, reprising that role, this time, however, in another career.

She has also been involved in BBC Switch, on a weekly mini-feature called "Josie Long's Confuse the Teacher Feature", where a word is read out by Long for young people listening to the show to include in their homework, which was formed after her suggestion of the idea during an interview on the show with Annie Mac.

She also appeared regularly in Robin Ince's podcast Show & Tell, now called "Robin and Josie's Utter Shambles", co-hosted the Resonance FM show I, DJ with Danielle Ward and Isy Suttie, and guested on Answer Me This! podcast. She appeared on the Jon Richardson Show on 27 July 2008 and again on 15 February 2009. On 9 October 2008 she appeared on Never Mind the Buzzcocks in the second programme of the 22nd series. On 19 January 2009 she appeared on the radio panel game Just a Minute. She appeared in hit Australian improvised-comedy show Thank God You're Here twice, the first of which aired on 6 May 2009. On 5 July 2009 she appeared on Sunday Night Show on Absolute Radio with Iain Lee. On 14 July and 28 July 2009 she appeared on Charlie Brooker's Channel 4 show You Have Been Watching.

On 21 August and 23 August 2009 Long performed at the Green Man Festival. On 15 November 2009, Long was the guest on the Dave Gorman radio show on Absolute Radio and the subsequent podcast of the show, before making her second appearance with Iain Lee, this time on Iain Lee's 2 Hour Long Late Night Radio Show, on the same station 8 days later. She occasionally writes for Alan Moore's underground magazine Dodgem Logic.

On 15 January 2010 she was a contestant on Channel 4's "irreverent, and often irrelevant, panel show" 8 Out of 10 Cats. On 18 March 2010 she appeared on the BBC Two comedy quiz TV programme show the Bubble, during which she notably wore a garment displaying Nye Bevan related witticisms.

Over the last 3 years Long has been consistently nominated by www.dont-start-me-off.com as the least funny comedian in the history of entertainment. Much studying of her act has been undertaken, including measuring of the silences after 'jokes' are delivered and the number of audience suicides during the performances. A typical quote from one of the Dont-Start-Me-Off professors reads; "I've just read a transcript of one of her 'performances' on a comedy chat forum and it seems she introduced herself to a live crowd by saying 'Hi, I'm Frank LeBeouf. (Pause) Not really!' For F*CK'S SAKE."

Live credits

• 2010 Be Honourable (Stand Up Show at the Edinburgh Fringe and Melbourne Comedy Festival)
• 2009 Darwin's Birthday Spectacular with Robin Ince
• 2009 All of the Planet's Wonders (Shown in Detail) (UK and Australian Tour)
• 2008 Trying is Good (UK, NZ, Montreal and Australian Tour. UCB Los Angeles)
• 2006 Kindness and Exuberance (UK and Australian Tour. UCB New York)

Radio credits

• 2009 All the Planet's Wonders on BBC Radio 4
• 2010 So Wrong, It's Right hosted by Charlie Brooker on BBC Radio 4
• 2010 The Adult Hour on TalkSport hosted by Ian Collins

Television credits

• 2009 Skins, Channel 4, as Josie, the group's careers advisor in series 2 and then English teacher in series 3.
• 2009 Maeve Higgins' Fancy Vittles, RTÉ2 (Ireland), as Maeve Higgins's English friend.

External links

• The MySpace page for Long's club and magazine
• Homepage for the Show & Tell podcast
• “Text messages are like saucy little letters”. Comedian Josie Long on her tech loves and hates, 11 July 2008
• Official homepage
• Chortle.com page