With the title of The Guilty Feminist Presents Camp as Christmas I was a little bit unsure of what to expect, which makes saying yes to a ticket all the more exciting. What I got was an evening of fantastic comedy that raised awareness and crucial funds for a very worthy cause, writes Michael Holland.
Deborah Frances-White and Tom Allen hosted – and performed in – this gala night that boasted an all LBGTQ+ line-up to support the Say It Loud Club, a charity run for and by LGBTQ+ refugees fleeing homophobic oppression, a charity committed to providing social, emotional, educational and advocacy support for LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.
Deborah Frances-White made us laugh at her Jehovah’s Witness background; Glaswegian Larry Dean riffed on finding his true love in a lifelong friend in a set where he played on his hard man accent not matching his true persona; Sophie Duker stormed out onto the stage and got in our faces with her loud, in-yer-face act that showed why she has been getting more and more acknowledgement for her comedy. The Queen Elizabeth Hall was alive with laughter.
Tom Allen did his turn but it was Rosie Jones that made the night for me. We see her pretty much holding her own on these comedy TV panel shows amongst slick, fast-talking comedians, but when you see her alone on a big stage with nobody trying to talk over her with their own gags, you can really see what she’s about. She owns her cerebral palsy by making it central to her routines, but never mocking it or herself. She is much too clever for that – a little research shows that she writes for many of our top TV comedy shows – and her performance tonight has put her in a whole new light for me.
The comedy was interspersed with information about the Say It Loud Club, testimonies from the founder and those that access its services, auctions of colourful hand-sewn, sequinned, multi-textured capes created by Despicable Daisy, and an emergency auction for Block 13, an African detention centre where gay people’s lives are seriously at risk; a cape went for £1500, an amount of money that will go a long way in helping those in need there.
The auctions for Say It Loud Club raised thousands, and more help and promises of money came from the good folk in the audience.
As Aloysius, the founder of Say It Loud Club said, ‘Not every refugee is fleeing famine or war, I was fleeing a country that had plenty of food, was not at war but where I could have been killed for being myself’
Catch The Guilty Feminist podcast and look out for their next show. You will not be disappointed.
