Our interview with Leila Johnston: blogger, author, and funny girl extraordinaire

The ever fabulous Stuart Waterman has interviewed the Editor of our sister site, AvailableForPanto, Leila Johnston, on what it's like to not only be an author, but to be a woman in the seemingly male dominated industry of humour writing...

How have you found working as a humorist in what tends to be thought of as a mainly male domain?

I thought that "as a woman" I might have to work harder to be accepted, but actually everything's gone brilliantly and I've been thoroughly well supported so far. However, I do think there is an insidious prejudice at work. At one point I thought seriously about 'doing a JK Rowling' and just using my initials instead of my full name in the book, because I worry that there's a very deep-seated social aversion to the idea of women being funny. It's not malicious just perceived as a bit unnatural - perhaps because funniness is a mode of attractiveness for men in a way it just isn't for women.

On the whole, men don't think find humour particularly sexy in a woman. Maybe if she's got 'funny' boobs. But I think we're slowly learning to divorce our sense of humour from our perceptions of attractiveness.

I've been hugely impressed with how supportive and professional all the writers I've encountered have been - both male and female - so it's both sad and quite mysterious to me that a man will still tend to pull bigger crowds and backing than a woman who's equally as funny.

Things seem to be gradually balancing out though. There are a lot of brilliant female writers and performers around now - Lucy Porter, Jo Neary, Helen Zaltzman, Isy Suttie... and as far as I can tell, many of them participate in a very supportive community. For some women writers and performers, their work is an extension of a very strong craft tradition, and that makes it quite overtly 'female' in a sense.

I think there's been a revival of this kind of stuff recently and it reinforces a sense of community. I'm hopeless at physically making stuff - I have no discipline or practical skills, but there are other ways to create. I am very interested in words and fairly abstract things (as long as they're basic enough for me to understand!) Possibly this makes what I do fairly ungendered. Or maybe that, in itself, is a sexist thing to say. I hope not.

Is your first name pronounced "Leela" like in Futurama, or "Layla" like in, um, Layla?

Haha. Good question. Although it does look like it should rhyme with "Sheila", it's "Layla".

When did you start your website, How To Worry Friends and Inconvenience People?

It's been an organic process and the site name and structure has changed a few times over the years. I've always made silly websites and online magazines and stuff like that, and some of the original "line-up" of gags were on an online list I started compiling of "29 things to do before you're 30" when I was a student. I think of that as the beginning - so around 2002/03. The site as it stands now has been overhauled twice this year and I'll carry on working on it and updating it when I get time.

The success of the site was helped by the whole viral web malarkey, wasn't it?

By February the contributions were really pouring in, so I Googled the site and found it was popping up on things like del.icio.us, stumbleupon, etc, and blogs all over the web. It was picked up by the nerdy newsletter NTK in January which probably the biggest initial boost.

When did publishers become interested? Did they come to you, or vice versa?

Some time in the spring, I think it was around April. I was working in a busy office as a magazine editor at the time, and I just had this email out of the blue saying "We like your site. Do you fancy a book deal?" It was amazing, but I went into shock and had to go for a walk in the rain. It took me a few months after that to decide to leave my job and try to make a proper go of the humour writing stuff.

Are there any plans for a follow-up book?

Yeah, I have something else in mind. I'm keeping quiet about it though. It's not going to be "even more ways to worry friends though"- I'm trying to keep a bit of artistic integrity (!)

Were you a good student at school? Did you go to university?

I was OK, but I wasn't very confident growing up, so I've always done everything late. I went to an ordinary school and I took two years out before I started my BA in History of Art at York. I enjoyed the theory stuff so much that I kept reading through a load of bum jobs and did a Masters in critical theory at Cambridge a couple of years later. It all meant the world to me at the time and it was amazing to be working alongside the best minds in the world, but ultimately academia is a community, and I'm not a very good mixer.

These days you're also writing for Available For Panto. Are you a reality TV addict?

Ha, not by choice! I'm like someone who's been surreptitiously plastered with nicotine patches while they sleep. And actually, that did happen that one time. Seriously though, the shows are growing on me. I like their formulaic structures and their bubbly hosts. A lot of them just make me feel a bit sad in my heart though. Still, hopefully that makes for entertaining blogging.

If you were to go on one reality TV show, which would it be?

The X Factor. I'd be the one hopping from one foot to the other singing "Puff The Magic Dragon", but it'd be great to meet Simon Cowell and see what shape Sharon Osbourne's face actually is, up close.

What are your favourite websites / blogs?

Apart from Dollymix, you mean? There's a brilliant comedy writer called James Henry who does Green Wing and is very funny and inspiring. I'm a huge fan of John Lydon and am working my way through the videos on his YouTube channel,. And I do an online PDF magazine, and From Old Books is a great resource for wonderful royalty-free images. I'm like retro games (I used to work as a Pac-Man demonstrator) so I do enjoy Zeeks.com when I have time to waste.

Who were your main comedic influences growing up?

I remember seeing Simon Munnery do the League Against Tedium on his Club Zarathustra show in Edinburgh and it rocked my tiny 14 year old world. I saw it again twice the same year and it was different every time. He was striding around the stage saying things like " What to say after sex? 'Thank you,' seems too much. 'I'm sorry' not enough," while disturbing slides flashed up in the background. In one show he handed out dunces caps to the audience. It was so pure and brilliant and I'd never seen anything like it. I tried out a joke (now in my book) at his "Annual General Meeting" show in Edinburgh a couple of years ago and he pretended to steal it! Maybe he really did steal it! Well, I wouldn't mind.

I listened to the radio a lot. I was much more into comedy than music, and I liked Alan Partridge and On The Hour, Chris Morris, all that lot, although I can't stand most of it now. Armando Iannucci was brilliant in the mid-nineties and still is. At some point you realise that these people have all been through the same stuff, and have had to carve out a voice and identify for themselves, deal with critics etc. Now I just really respect the people who've weathered the storms, been professional about it, and managed to get on with their jobs and create wonderful things on demand. Which is why, despite his advancing years and decreasing average movie quality, these days I'm very impressed with Woody Allen.

What's the worst job you've ever done?

My first and worst job was working in a back room at the vets'
surgery. On a good day it'd just be filing and listening to the dying sighs of stricken Yorkshire terriers, but on a bad day I'd be asked to rinse out the syringes in a sink. They were disgusting - always full of mystery goo. I've had a lot of bad jobs though. I've worked as a glass-collector at nightclubs, as a dinner lady, telesales... you name it, I'll tell you if I've done it.

What are your ambitions for the future?

I'm in talks at the moment to do one or two things for radio, then there's this second book. I've had a good response to my YouTube videos, and I'd like to work out a way of performing some stuff live. But mainly, my 2008 work plan is to knuckle down, stop staring out of the window, and try to write great things.

How do people tend to worry and / or inconvenience you?

I'm not sure if this is a feedline, but I'll give you an honest response. Reviewers have inconvenienced me recently by making lazy comparisons and using the wrong words for things. One had so little clue what to make of the book they reviewed it as though it was a post-modern work of fiction, calling it a 'novel' throughout. Someone else missed the point of a gag about insulin and we ended up getting a complaint from the British Diabetic Association. What next? The British Luncheon Association complaining about my suggestion that you hide your oyster card in a sandwich and scan that?

Comedy is very 'hip' these days, which is good in a way because it's bringing it to more people, but it does mean that if you're a bit of a one-off, you have to look harder to find someone you can identify with. There's a horrible nostalgia/irony/amateur/scruffy "just got out of bed" thing happening which seems to me to be just a self-indulgent extension of the hipster movement where you don't need to have an opinion about anything beyond yourself, and anyone can fit in if they look the part.

This tidal wave of whimsy might be a reaction to the 'nastyness' of 90s comedy. Some of it is funny and sweet, but a lot of it is just weirdness for the sake of it - there's no edge there at all. I'd like to see something new and genuinely unfashionable, not just a bloke in a 'funny' suit or a woman with a hilariously amateurish haircut.

Amateurism is endearing up to a point but I struggle with the idea that it's something to be embraced. There are comics out there still doing 10 year old material, gags about Diana etc. It's laziness disguised as tedious 'irony'. Writing comedy is difficult, and I can see how people fall into these traps. But I feel like it's supposed to be difficult, otherwise you'll never do anything worthwhile.

It worries me too when the ideas in my book are described as 'surreal', because it brings to mind these fashionable unfashionables.Or someone standing on a roof shouting "teapot!" in a funny voice.Which actually sounds kind of funny now I've said it, but you know what I mean. It's basically a meaningless word. You could say that all jokes are surreal, that's why they're jokes. Maybe it's because I'm not very good at telling stories, but I just want to strip away everything that's not necessary. So at the moment it's just a list of gags in a book, and that's great, but I'm working on a way to translate the fairly minimalist philosophy into video and radio stuff.
I like to think I'm bringing nasty back.

You can purchase a copy of Leila's fabulous book How to Worry Friends and Inconvenience People from Snow Books.

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