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Track:
Josie Long
Album:
Tedstock
Plays:
421 plays
Who here, out of everyone here, likes Josie Long?
Her set from Tedstock, February 2007, introduced by Stewart Lee.
Memories of Acton
Josie Long:
I used to live in Acton; it’s bullshit! You poor thing!
Me:
You've referred to it before as ‘Rapey Acton.’
JL:
It’s because I had to walk home from the train station, ten minutes. It’s really perilous, it’s on this estate that just felt really lonely and not policed and there was no people around. I’d walk home really scared and there was this fucking family on this estate that had this horrible pit-bull they just used to let run around. So I’d get there and it’d be there, maybe just on the street. I was really freaked out by it and I went away for a few days for Christmas, came back and I was a bit relieved and I was like, “I’m overreacting; it’s not that bad,” and there was this big sign saying “Serious sexual assault here” right by the station and I was like, “This is not cool. This is not a nice place.”
Me:
There are some shops I love around Acton that I’ll miss, there’s this 99p or More or Less shop. Opposite that is Omid Pizza and I really love their pizzas. I went in there and asked if I could speak to Omid. It turns out there’s not actually an Omid, it’s just meant to sound like “home made.”
JL:
That’s amazing! There’s no Omid, that’s so lovely.
Me:
And near the sports centre...
JL:
Oh yeah, I know it; swam there many a time.
Me:
There’s a place that sells chicken and they sell fish. What do you call a shop that sells chicken and fish? ChicFish.
JL:
In Stoke Newington there’s ChickPizz. It’s beautiful.
Josie Long interview
I met up with the kind and exuberant comedian Josie Long for an interview just before she went off to plunder charity shops for her London is Funny column. She suggested a pub in Holborn for the venue which turned out to be a BNP hangout with a distinct smell of dead rat. Next time I’ll choose.
Here’s an extra added special bonus piece of conversation around my question about her atheism. I brought up the only other thing of note in Holborn: the Sceptics in the Pub meetings.
Josie: How are they? Are they great?
Me: It’s quite good; I’ve seen Robin Ince there, Jon Ronson, Ben Goldacre… It sometimes creates a church-like atmosphere in itself.
Josie: Yeah, ‘cos people are so… but you know what? It’s a way that people bond and that bonding is for good.
Me: You can tell that the bonding there is the only bonding some of the attendees get.
Josie: Aww, yeah, lonely dorks. People need ways to look after one another a bit and be kind to one another and anything that does that can be good. More and more I find I have to organise community events. Where I live there’s a resident’s group and they have meetings and it’s so lovely and I wish there was more things like that in cities ‘cos in villages you have your village mayor, and when you have kids you have your school fête so it’s more for people who don’t fit into established community categories; something to bring them together.
At a comedy night on Feb 18th, 2009 my mother was kind enough to pass on to top comedian Josie Long the fact that it was my birthday. She kindly passed on birthday wishes and then the Knock2Bag crew were then kind enough to forward me the resulting footage. The moral of the story is that on your birthday, people are kind (well, kind enough).
