Comedian tells how to spot signs of boring life

A COMEDIAN tells of life growing up with a West Indian mother and what it takes to get out of a relationship rut in the second anniversary show of Honk! later this month.

Heleana Blackwell will headline alongside Red Richardson and also Arielle Dundas, who appeared at the inaugural event, who will take the mic at the Relais Henley hotel on Tuesday, August 27, from 7.30pm.

Heleana is coming to Henley for the first time and says: “I know it’s where the royal regatta is, so I’m expecting it to be very glamorous and nice.”

The 2023 Funny Women semi-finalist, whose television show Attack of the 5ft Woman — about “a black nerd in a small town that doesn’t like people to be outside of any boxes” — recently aired on Apple TV, will be performing her latest work in progress, which has an observational flavour.

Heleana says: “I’ll talk about West Indian mothers a lot and how they love differently, how they love you by trying to scare you, and I talk about three reasons why immigrant parents really care about the kind of job you get.

“Also, about how sometimes, when you’ve been with someone for a while, you can become a little bit boring and routine, but you don’t realise it until you get a sign from the outside world. One of my jokes is about exactly how I get that sign, which is somewhat humbling because it comes from a bank and involves a sex shop.”

Happily married to poet Sophia Blackwell since 2016, last year the couple’s show, Wife Material, went to venues including the Brighton Fringe, the Camden Fringe and the Bill Murray comedy club in Islington.

Heleana says: “We met through a mutual friend, Jo Webber, who likes to set people up on Facebook once a quarter. She has been so successful at it that she’s got three marriages and two babies to her name, so there’s actually human beings walking this earth due to her efforts.

“That was really lovely because people say, ‘Oh, when you stop looking, you’ll find someone’ and I was 100 per cent looking, I was leaving no stone unturned but, by that point, I was looking in a relatively zen way.

“My view at the time was like, if I went on a date with someone and it didn’t work out, then I’ll make a great friend.

“I think that sometimes, particularly on the lesbian scene, with that ‘girlfriend’ radar, it’s almost shark-like in its precision, so I think sometimes it’s just relaxing to find someone not doing that.” The pair took swing dancing lessons before their wedding but did so for very different reasons.

“My wife and I are really different and really similar at the time,” says Heleana. “At a values level we’re really similar but in terms of how we go about things, we often wildly diverge into two different directions, so our show is about that and sometimes our lives are like that too.

“So, as a perfect example, for the swing dancing, I thought, ‘Brilliant, exercise’, and she was like, ‘Great, nice dresses’. I’m the slightly more punitive, Calvinist one and I call her the ‘fun csar’, because she’s the one in charge of the fun.

“So, when we’re moving house, I’m the one that does all the negotiation and making sure we don’t get ripped off and she’s the one that makes sure that in the house, everything looks beautiful and everything is in its perfect place and doesn’t get lost and never gets messed up and is all perfectly Marie Kondo-ed.

“I’ve got no hand-eye co-ordination, my sense of detail is absolutely shocking but I’ll get you the best deal on a painter-director, so it’s about knowing what you’re bad at and being honest.”

The couple were also excited to be invited to play Scissors, a new LGBTQ space in Glastonbury, in June. Heleana says: “It was incredible, they’ve got a whole sort of gay village with music and whatnot, so we got to be part of the first ever one, on the Saturday night and that was really fun.”

She got in touch with Honk! founder Tom Ryan, from Henley, having heard about the comedy nights on the grapevine.

“I actually messaged Tom on Instagram,” says Heleana. “They sounded really cool and they had got really great people on it. I had heard good things about it and it’s got a really good vibe, so I just literally went, ‘Hey!’.”

Red is the son of Comic Strip director and screenwriter Peter Richardson and is married to Rosie Mayall, daughter of the late Rik Mayall. His first nationwide tour, Bugati Live, is about to start and he has appeared on ITV2’s The Stand Up Sketch Show and Ricky Gervais & Friends.

Arielle kicked off Honk! when she appeared at the former Drifters coffee house in Henley almost exactly two years ago. She will arrive straight from her run at the Edinburgh Finge with Hyperactivity Disorder, exploring how her diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has affected her life.

• Honk! Henley’s second anniversary show, with Heleana Blackwell, Red Richardson and Arielle Dundas is at the Relais Henley on August 27. Doors open at 7pm. Tickets cost from £11.55. For more information and to book, visit linktr.ee/honkhot