‘Queen of break-ups’ on finding love again

A COMEDIAN whose book about a traumatic break-up evolved into a critically acclaimed podcast is performing at the next Honk! night.

Rosie Wilby, who wrote The Breakup Monologues after her girlfriend dumped her via an email, has explored all aspects of heartbreak with her podcast guests, who have included Ed Byrne, Zoe Lyons and Lou Sanders, among others.

Now happily married to Suz, the 54-year-old “queen of break-ups” says: “I have been fascinated about break-ups and I’ve been really interested in the psychology of love and particularly the psychology of how we recover from a break-up for many years.

“The Breakup Monologues are all about how you can sort of learn from your past break-ups to figure out how to communicate better in new relationships that you begin.

“It’s also about how to figure out what you want and how to navigate love and cope with those rollercoaster moments and the ups and downs of being in a real relationship and actually maybe staying in it and making something work.

“So I think I’m quite honest in the book about the realities of a relationship and how you can be in an ostensibly happy relationship but there will be days when you’re really pissed off with each other. I think I’m quite honest about that, with full respect to Suz.

“Obviously, you negotiate with your partner things you’re allowed to put in a book or not, or a comedy set, and certain things are private, of course.

“But I also think it’s important to be realistic about love and relationships and not just be so seduced by the greetings card, sugary, saccharine sort of Valentine’s idea that, you know, we’re going to find one person and at the moment we meet them we’re going to know that’s the one and everything is going to be fine from that moment on.

“So I’ve really been doing a lot both in comedy in quite silly and funny ways, but also in more serious articles and debates and discussions and Tedex talks and so on, to just sort of dispel some of the myths about relationships and to begin a more conscious and thoughtful discussion around love and how we do it.”

Rosie came to comedy from a musical background. In the Nineties, she wrote a magazine column called Rosie’s Pop Diary, in which she covered her exploits in the eponymous band Wilby, which became her comedy show, How (Not) To Make It In Britpop.

“We used my surname for the band name because it was me and my songs and a slightly rotating cast of musicians,” she says, “and it was partly because people kept getting together and breaking up — as often happens in bands — and sometimes great music can be made, of course. See Fleetwood Mac and ABBA.

“I think music was really my first love, creating songs and melodies and little stories I could tell in songs from an early age, playing on funny little synthesisers as a kid. But I started to kind of talk about stuff in between the songs. I would tell a story of where the song had come from, and particularly when the band had all broken up and I started doing solo music gigs, I wanted to liven things up so I wasn’t just another slightly wistful and sad lady with an acoustic guitar.

“And people just started laughing, even though I thought the stories were a bit sad and bleak and kind of self-deprecating, people were enjoying the humour.

“I found myself in comedy finals, including the Funny Women final at the Comedy Store in 2006, but very much my roots in it came from performing as a musician.

“I think as a musician I was quite introverted, I was quite shy and sort of hiding behind my guitar and just hoping people would enjoy the songs. It’s interesting now, when I have ever gone back to performing music, I obviously know so much more now about stagecraft.

“Even if you’re faking it you have to sort of put on an extrovert persona, and on stage as a comedian, you’re kind of naked, it’s just you.”

When Rosie received that fateful email in 2011, ending her relationship, she felt that the show had to go on.

“I talk in the book about a gig that I did on the evening that I had got dumped and how I thought about cancelling the gig, because I didn’t think I was in a fit state to try and be funny to a roomful of strangers,” she says. “Actually it was one of the most magical gigs ever, because there was certain freshness, a certain vulnerability to it.

“Yes, I had to rewrite a lot of my jokes on the hoof and say, ‘God, well, this one doesn’t work anymore’, and so I had to rewrite the script.

“I think there’s a lot to be learned from how comedy and laughter can be healing, particularly if you’re sharing something and feel seen. And I do think now there’s a lot more discussion about break-ups and about heartbreak and about recovering and there’s a lot of stigma being smashed around the idea of being single, you know, particularly for women.

“That was always seen as something terrible or shameful, whatever your sexual orientation, if you were left ‘on the shelf’ as it were, you know, that’s because no one wanted you, rather than you’d actually made a choice that you quite liked being on your own and kind of wanted to choose yourself for a while.

“I think it’s really interesting how we now see more and more people talking about break-ups and reinvention after other kinds of losses as well and a sort of personal growth and transformation.

“But I do feel, when I started my trilogy of shows about love and relationships and then The Breakup Monologues podcast a few years ago, it still felt like something we didn’t talk about a lot, it felt like something where we went away and licked our wounds on our own in private.”

Now in the process of writing her first book of fiction, Rosie is quite happy to have shared some personal insights into her love life.

“There’s tons of things that are universal, I just think it’s important for me to be kind of out there about who I am.

“So many books are written by straight white men from a straight white male perspective, whereas lots of women, lots of heterosexual women friends of mine, have said, ‘Oh my god, it’s really refreshing to read about lesbian relationships and how that works’.

“And I thought it would be really easy just going out with another woman but, actually, it’s just as complicated and human beings are really messy, aren’t they?”

People are welcome to bring their copies of The Breakup Monologues along to the Honk! gig for signing, says Rosie.

“I just hope to see people there and obviously if anyone has bought the book ahead of time, I will be happy to sign a fun message, perhaps even dedicate it to someone’s ex.

“I have been asked to write messages to people’s ex-partners and I’ve been responsible apparently for brokering some kind of, you know, friendships between exes and healing some old wounds for people when they’ve both read my book and shared it between them. So maybe I can bring some healing ex relationship therapy to Henley.”

• Honk! Henley is at the Relais Henley on Monday, September 23 at 7.30pm. Also on the bill with Rosie Wilby are comedians Tadiwa Mahlunge, Jin Hao Li and Victoria Smith. Tickets cost from £11.55 from linktr.ee/honkhot The Breakup Monologues book is available from linktr.ee/breakup
monologues and the podcast is on Apple Podcasts.