Well, hello, there. My name’s Marianne and I write funny books for little girls. In fact, I write funny books for everyone, but right now my jokes are mainly about lip gloss and magazines and the incredible, overwhelming importance of a new skirt, and for some reason people seem to think they’ll go down better among readers unhampered by a Y chromosome.
God, I loved being a little girl. Everything was funny. Grown-ups were funny. Swear words were funny. Boys were funny. But the funniest thing of all was other little girls. We’d sit up half the night, high on some unholy concoction of orange squash, Sprite and part-dissolved Chewits and laugh and laugh about…you know what, I don’t even remember. There’s something about being a nine-year-old girl that lets you see the world for exactly what it is. And that’s fabulously, unbearably, wee–a–tiny–bit–into–your–polka–dot–knickers hilarious.
So, what a tremendously brilliant thing it is to write books for them! Especially since, for some reason I don’t even slightly understand, there are very few others writing funny stuff for pint–sized ladies. In fact, there’s not masses of humour for the under–elevens all round, although the roaring success of Mr Gum and the Roald Dahl Funny Prize mean that things are improving fast.
What’s especially weird is that this is despite the fact that there’s loads of funny kids’ writing on the telly and at the cinema, and there has been for yonks. It’s easy to sneer at American kids’ TV, but spend five minutes with Hannah Montana or Spongebob Squarepants and you’ll have had a faceful of jokes. They’re not always simple jokes, either. Or at least, they’re not just simple jokes. Kids are capable of getting some pretty sophisticated stuff, just as, conversely, I’ve seen an adult audience fall about with helpless mirth because a comic ended his routine with the line: "it wasn’t chocolate, it was a massive poo!"
I’ve done a bit of stand-up. It was fine. I probably wouldn’t do it again, because I already know I’m going to die at some point, and bringing that moment forward and relocating it to Edinburgh seems, frankly, unnecessary. But I’m properly excited about going into schools and telling jokes. There’s something really delicious about messing around as part of an official lesson, with teachers watching. And any hecklers will be getting covered with silly string.
There’s a purpose to all this, of course. My books may be light, but they are about important stuff: friendship, jealousy, sacrifice and love. Much like The Hunger Games, in fact, only without any of the same settings or plots or characters. And a lot more about cake. The thing is, I’ve got a secret agenda here. OK, it’s less of a secret now I’ve told you, but hey ho.
I want to get more girls into comedy. Not just watching it, but doing it, too. I’d so completely love it if, in ten years time, I was watching TV in my brand new mansion made of gold and Would I Lie To You? was on, with two teams of funny women. Wouldn’t that be a thing? Wouldn’t it be The Best? And then, I’d go to my vast library, with shelves carved from diamond and there, in the kids’ section, I’d find 37,000 funny books for girls, by girls. And 37,000 more funny books for boys and girls, and they’d be by girls, too.
Because I reckon the main reason women are underrepresented in comedy is that they don’t see it as something they can do. They watch telly and they see panel games and sketch shows dominated by men. They grow older and find the stand up circuit, too, is mostly blokes.
But it needn’t be this way! I’m so passionate about this that I’m thumping on my caps lock – GIRLS ARE FUNNY! I knew it at the age of nine and I know it now. We can do this stuff. We just need to remember that we’re allowed to. So the crusade starts here, and I hope you’ll join me. We’ll launch our assault with clean teeth and nice hair and lots and lots of jokes. Good jokes, bad jokes, sophisticated jokes and silly jokes, and anyone who doesn’t like it has to sit and read Twilight until their eyes fall out. Wahoooo!
Ellie-May Would Like To Be Taken Seriously For a Change is out on 2 August, published by Jelly Pie.