The art of Having A Bad Time I’ve been teaching comedy writing workshops for Whitman College in the US, specifically on using stand-up techniques to make art about the climate emergency. I was really stunned by not just the originality of what people created, but by the refusal to accept a defeatist or dumbed down…

Plus: why Chappell Roan matters more than you think. I’m so excited to be an Associate Artist on the QUEER NATURES research programme! My project is called UNSEXY BEASTS and I’ll be experimenting with different pole dancing ugly animals to ask questions like: • Why do certain bodies get labelled “desirable” or “undesirable?” • What does that…

I went to the Fringe this year with one question: what feels fun? When things you love doing get mixed with financial stress and career pressure, it’s easy for that to sink to the bottom of the priority list. I needed to reconnect with just the fun part. And it worked! I had a great…

The universe is gay and it’s trolling me 🌈 I’m copywriting for a gay sex shop, and honestly I love it. I mostly sit in the back office writing product descriptions for the website, but every now and we topple into the shop together in a flurry of activity: a customer needs urgent advice on…

The meta-experiment of Pole Yourself Together! People underestimate how much of being a live artist is admin. I only became a pole comic to follow my true passion, which is: emailing people about the ceiling.  My show Pole Yourself Together! is a banishing spell for dread, and an underlying part of that dread is sexual harassment. I’ve…

In defence of anguish bangers. Yearning! Regret! Using your SAD lamp as a ringlight for nudes! Yearning from different angles! Yearning with better filters! Making sly references to an ex on Instagram before the main evening Yearn!  I love the Lanaverse. It is a place where you can royally not have your shit together and…

Periods test my biggest lesson from pole dancing which is: how do you love your body when you don’t really like your body? I’m sorry to do the uterine equivalent of a dick-swing, and I hate to boast, but: I am a very heavy bleeder. Every month gifts me at least 2 or 3 days…

Pole dancing and stand-up have a lot in common: there’s a high risk of onstage death, neither career will impress your parents, and both have a love-hate relationship with hen parties.  I feel very lucky that I was a dead-behind-the-eyes stand-up comic before I went anywhere near a pole for the resilience, self-awareness and thick…

Pole dancing has been amazing for my mental health, so it seemed about time to nuke that this year by doing the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s the point in December when I’m planning next year (I don’t care for your shunning the basics and your “not making new year’s resolutions” resolutions – I love the Post…

Making a pole dancing comedy show has felt like the scene in Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers where Gromit is frantically laying down train tracks just as the train is about to run on them. The pole dancing industry is very new, and combining it with stand-up is even newer, so I’ve been figuring out…