A lot of people thought I’d gone blonde for the Barbie film... I was actually doing it like Paul Gascoigne!
Comic Maisie Adam chats with MARION McMULLEN about football, hairstyles and why she’s ready for her Appraisal as she kicks off on a new UK tour
You turned 30 in January. Was that a big moment?
So many of my peers in comedy are older than me so I don’t feel aware of age. Also, I think if I had a birthday in the summer I’d be going ‘yeah. it was amazing, I had this great birthday party,’ but January is a rubbish month for a birthday. No one’s got any money, it’s dark, everyone’s doing dry January, so I didn’t even celebrate it.
Is there a theme to your new Appraisal tour?
It’s about everything that’s been going on for me in the last couple of years. I got married in June 2023 and then played Soccer Aid at Old Trafford the next day. That’s a weekend that I don’t think many people will be able to say they’ve had. Then three days later you’re trying out jokes in a room above a pub and a day after that you’re hosting the UK Mattress Awards. Sometimes you have to stop and go ‘what on earth is happening here?’ .
How did the tour’s title come about?
I’m now in my fifth year of being able to say that this is my job and the title came from a conversation with a friend who said normally when anybody in his company has been there for five years, they come in for an appraisal. That doesn’t really exist in comedy, but maybe this tour is that. Each night you’re going in for a meeting with people who are going to sit the other side from you and let you know how you’re doing.
Hopefully the audience will be impressed and I’ll keep my job.
How have the warm-up shows gone?
You’ve got ideas in your notepad and you don’t really know how they’re all going to form together. But I really like work-in-progress shows for that reason, because you can share a little secret with the audience like, ‘I think I’ve got an idea and I want to know if I’m barking up the wrong tree.’
I like that vulnerability. It gives you a different thrill to when you’re on tour, where you’re like, ‘I think I’ve got a brilliant show and I want you to hear it.’
Who would you say your typical fans are?
Before my first tour, Buzzed, I’d been tour support for bigger comedians like Jason Manford, Josh Widdicombe and John Bishop, and one of the things I clocked was how different every comic’s audience is. So I was nervous but really excited to see what my crowd was going to be like. Was it going to be people who heard me talk about women’s football on Radio 4 or people who like the woman with the weird hair on Mock the Week?
I guess now it’s those same things plus a new specific audience from the Big Kick Energy podcast.
The podcast has been a huge hit. How did it come about?
When the Women’s World Cup was on there was no comedy entertainment show about football. It felt like all of the talk around it was clinical and technical, which doesn’t do much for new fans. I thought I’d do a podcast about ‘what if I knew somebody who was enthusiastic but doesn’t know the ins and outs?’ And that’s Suzi (Ruffell). We came up with this idea that I could get Suzi into football during the World Cup and afterwards we got loads of messages going ‘please continue it’, so we carried on and within eight months won Sports Podcast of the Year at the Broadcast Sport Awards.
You have shaved your hair in the past and now sport a new blonde look. Have you had much reaction?
It’s strange, I was getting quite a lot of tweets saying ‘love the new hair,’ when I was on the Last Leg in March, but I dyed it blonde last summer for the World Cup. I guess a lot of telly stuff I’ve filmed since then hasn’t gone out yet, so this was probably the first time that people would see this hair. And, not to sound like a little old man, but I’ve been growing it out the back, it’s too cold to have my head exposed when I’m walking back from gigs. I fancied a change. A lot of people
thought I’d gone blonde for the Barbie film, which was annoying as I was actually doing it like Paul Gascoigne!
Are you keeping it like this for the tour?
I better have. I’ve had my photos done now.
Do you still play for a football team?
Yes, the Brighton Seagals. I love it. I was filming QI and they got me a car home but I asked for the car to take me straight to training. I got changed as soon as we’d finished filming. The driver dropped me off and I was in a full face of make-up which was running everywhere by the end of the training session.
What are the best and worst things about touring?
The best thing is getting the opportunity to gig to a room full of different people every single night. The worst thing is travelling on your own. You do start to feel a bit Alan Partridge staying in hotel rooms.
I went through my phone camera recently and it was just pictures of hotel room doors with the numbers on because you’re away for seven nights in a row, you get to the hotel and you are suddenly [it’s] ‘what number room am I in?’ That’s how I remember the room numbers. But, if that’s the s **** iest part of touring, it’s pretty good.