Tom Hackett meets the Spice Girls-loving affectionate pop parodists.

Following the whirlwind success of their first outing at the Edinburgh Fringe festival last year, musical cabaret comedy act Frisky and Mannish have been surprising and amusing audiences nationwide with their ‘twisted’ takes on pop classics – anything from Kate Bush/Kate Nash mash-ups to terrifyingly psychotic renditions of The Bangles’ ‘Eternal Flame’. Venue catches up with their real-life alter-egos, Laura Corcoran and Matthew Jones, before they bring the characters to Bristol for more musical education in new show ‘The College Years’.

Tell us about Frisky and Mannish.
Matthew: Well, they’re two sort of freaks, I guess. They’re totally made up by us, the names came from a poem by Byron, we were looking for something that was silly and memorable... They’re really exaggerations of things that we find funny – Frisky’s become very much a dominant and quite scary woman, while Mannish is sort of sulky and diffident.

Did you ever want to be a straight pop act?
L: I think if somebody had ever offered it to us on a plate, we’d have both gone ‘yeah, brilliant!’ But you don’t really have much control over your life when you’re doing that sort of thing. It’s a lot more fun to have a sidelong glance at it all. I can’t imagine having to do the pop star thing and have to go (affects a high-pitched American accent) ‘Oh my God, it’s just so good to be here and I just love everything!’, when in fact you’re dying inside. At least when you’re doing something a bit more cynical you can show your rage, when you need to!

Have you ever heard from any of the acts you’ve sent up?
L: We did have Kate Nash in the audience for ‘School of Pop’, the first year we were in Edinburgh. We’d sort of heard a rumour before we came on stage that she was there, so when it came to the Kate Nash/Kate Bush song, we both sort of went ‘we’ll be gentle tonight, I think!’ But she was very gracious and sweet about the whole thing, she didn’t give any sense of being offended. Because we don’t send people up in a harsh way, we’re not cruel in what we do – it’s very much born of affection and love for the music.

Do you think of yourselves as comedians or musical entertainers?
L: Well, we came out of the cabaret circuit in London, which at that time was dominated by the burlesque revival. And what that led to was the opening of the door for any kind of act at all, any sort of speciality act: magic acts, music acts, circus acts – it was a sort of mini-rebirth of variety. So that was the circuit we aimed ourselves at... And, yes, we wanted it to be funny, that was part of what we thought would make it enjoyable, but we didn’t set out to do the comedy circuit and to put ourselves alongside stand-up comedians or sketch comedy. So it’s been quite a pleasant surprise and quite a scary…

Do comedy crowds tend to ‘get’ what you do?
L: Audiences on the whole have been extremely open-minded. I think people are getting a bit bored of just going to see stand-up, and male stand-ups as well. There’s a bit of an appetite for women in comedy and sketch comedy, anything sort of a bit weird.

FRISKY & MANNISH WERE AT THE COMEDY BOX AT THE HEN & CHICKEN, BRISTOL ON FRI 12 AND SAT 13 NOV. SEE REVIEW HERE.

Copyright Tom Hackett 2010 

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