“I’d never done solo standup, actually,” says Mel Hudson. “It had all been H and P, the double-act.”
Best known as French co-host Nina Vanier in Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, Lauren’s French teacher in The Catherine Tate Show, and one half of Radio 4’s Hudson & Pepperdine, the actor and comedian is preparing her first solo hour after 15 years away from creating new live material.
The shift began at a college reunion. “I was invited to make a speech in front of quite a big audience, and it went a storm,” Hudson says. “I realised that that’s very similar to standup—although the key is always adjusting to your audience, however wide that might be. I kept getting invited back to give more speeches, and in the end, some of the material about my life felt like it could make a show.”
Writing without long-time comedy partner Vicki Pepperdine meant changing a long-established process.
“With Hudson and Pepperdine, Vicki and I used to have ideas separately, come together and riff on them, and then write them up separately,” she says. “With this solo stuff, I have ideas, riff on them on my own, and then write them up on my own. Sometimes I replace Vicki with half a bottle of wine. But usually if I make myself laugh, that’s a starting point—and then I sometimes try jokes out on my daughter, who is in my show as herself. She’s my toughest audience, so if it works on her, it’ll work on anyone.”
Stepping out of the engine
Screen audiences frequently recognise Hudson as the foil to manic central figures, playing alongside Steve Coogan, Catherine Tate, and Milton Jones. Yet she rejects any suggestion that playing the counterpoint was a lesser role.
“I actually love playing those ‘foil’ parts just as much—if you’re part of a really good comic engine, it’s just as much of a buzz,” she says. “As ‘Hudson’ in Hudson and Pepperdine, I was pretty much the ‘source of chaos’, as I was the more foolish one. Doing the solo show—it’s just another iteration. I get bored doing the same thing, so I’m inspired to give this format a try. It has so much freedom—I can really bang on about whatever I want—and it’s very personal; and yes—there is a certain pride in allowing myself to grow enough to occupy that space. At age 61.”
Outside live comedy, Hudson has built a career narrating audiobooks, including Adrian Tchaikovsky’s sci-fi trilogy Children of Time. Recording in a studio booth, however, offers a very different dynamic from a live room.
“I kept getting invited back to give more speeches, and in the end, some of the material about my life felt like it could make a show.”
“When doing an audiobook I definitely don’t long for a live audience—any more than the person listening to it would dream of being part of an audience for that,” she says. “The intimacy is the point. When narrating, I really connect with the book itself—in the same way you enter the world of a book as a reader. I curl up with it, and live with it. The only similarity, I guess—is that there are climaxes, within both forms, as part of the structure—and it’s always a lovely moment, either in an audio booth, or on a stage, when you feel that moment of everyone holding their breath as that emotional climax comes.”
Her Fringe hour, Richard Ashcroft Revived My Libido, focuses on past relationships and midlife romance, touching on everything from The Osmonds to PMMR (Post-Menopausal Motorway Refusal).
“It’s unashamedly a look back at my love life and the lessons I’ve learned along the way,” Hudson says. “I hope to inspire and encourage other older women and younger women with my ‘message’—which is to celebrate that part of yourself and recognise its potential! So far, from the audience responses from those demographics that I’ve had—it’s working! But men love it too! I had one young man tell me I was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen ‘in real life’. Beat that for a review.”
Asked how the script avoids worn-out comedy clichés about middle age, Hudson points to daily attrition rather than grand drama.
“It’s unashamedly a look back at my love life and the lessons I’ve learned along the way,” Hudson says. “I hope to inspire and encourage other older women and younger women with my ‘message’…”
“By embracing the fact that the whole point of midlife is that you can be a bit tired,” she says. “It’s a constant uphill struggle just bothering to remember which interdental brush to use between which teeth on any given day. Getting my steps in. Unsubscribing from emails. Doing my face yoga—which just means holding my face up! And I don’t even do HRT—go and ask some women who are on that how much of a faff it is.”
Directed by Sam Holland-Bunyan, the show also features her daughter Ripley onstage. For Hudson, the appeal of live performance – and presumably the Edinburgh Fringe lying ahead – ultimately lies in its unpredictability, recalling a recent rehearsal hiccup when a misplaced prop forced her daughter to hold the stage alone.
“I forgot a prop—some salad for the trauma salad—and went out of the auditorium to the backstage fridge to get it, leaving Ripley alone onstage unexpectedly,” Hudson says. “She first told them a quick anecdote about meeting a naked man in the dressing room… and then when I still wasn’t back, did a bit of a Goddess Chakra Dance. Killed it.”
It seems that if you’re going to walk into Mel Hudson’s Richard Ashcroft Revived My Libido, this Fringe, you are walking into the unexpected. In other words, she’ll fit right in.
Featured Image: Mel Hudson – credit Jake Walters
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