Get your skates on, Cambridge, and be wowed by Lou Sanders
Expect some eye-opening anecdotes and surprising revelations – including one involving a horse – at comedian Lou Sanders’ latest stand-up show.
Taskmaster champion Lou is on her biggest UK tour to date with the brand new One Word: Wow, and the likeable thirty-something who hails from the seaside town of Broadstairs but now lives in London will be bringing it to Cambridge Junction on April 27.
The uniquely confessional piece explores themes including love, fear, and becoming a new-found adrenaline junkie with roller skating. On this last topic, Lou, co-host of the Broadcast Digital Award-winning Unforgiveable on Dave, shares with the Cambridge Independent that she was a regular visitor to skateparks during the pandemic.
“That’s my total love,” she explains. “I did it when I was really little – not at skateparks, just around the promenade when I was seven, or whatever, but not for very long. So you feel like a kid again – it’s so good because it’s such a thrill; it’s really freeing and just puts you in the moment. You’re just whizzing around feeling like a little kid, it’s lovely.”
Does wearing all the protective equipment stop Lou from being recognised? “Well I did get recognised at this skatepark I go to,” she reveals. “He said, ‘I really liked you on Taskmaster’ and then I felt really
embarrassed because I’m not good enough at skating and then you just feel quite vulnerable. So I said thank you and then fell over!”
Lou continues: “It [the show] is about what I did in the pandemic, really, roller skating, meeting a younger man... It’s about parents’ demise but it’s quite light-hearted so there’s not much heaviness in it really. Not after the couple of years we’ve had – keep it light, I say. But it touches on universal themes: ego, love and fear.”
She reveals that she did indeed fall in love, but then she and her new man broke up. “Did we get back together? You’ll have to check out the show,” states Lou, who also writes regular columns for The Guardian and Metro.
Popular with audiences and critics alike, Lou’s previous effort, Say Hello to Your New Step-Mummy, was selected as a top show to see in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, the i newspaper, the Evening Standard, The Mirror, Time Out and Joe.co.uk.
“I wasn’t actually someone’s stepmother – that was a joke that I like all the dads,” she says, “so I could be a new step-mummy but I wasn’t actually becoming a step-mummy.”
Lou would make a good stepmother, I suggested – after all, what child wouldn’t like a roller-skating mother figure? “Thank you,” she says. “The highest of accolades... ‘You’d make a good step-mum’.”
The accompanying blurb about One Word: Wow mentions an unfortunate incident for Lou involving a horse. “I was trying to tap into the horse’s energy and then next thing we knew...” Well, as she says, you’ll have to go to the show for that one.
Lou’s TV credits include The Late Late Show with James Corden (CBS), Live At the Apollo (BBC One), QI (BBC Two), Travel Man (Channel 4), Hypothetical (Dave) and 8 Out of 10 Cats (Channel 4).
On featuring on The Late Late Show, Lou says she would like to perform more in the US and in other countries (she has previously taken to the stage in, among other places, Switzerland, Norway and Germany).
“I love travelling but also you get paid more in the States,” she notes, adding: “Well why wouldn’t you go global, babe, if you can?” Did some good things come as a result of that appearance? “Yeah, I guess so. You always want more though, don’t you? Greedy!”
Lou Sanders, who admits (unforgivably) that she always confuses Cambridge with Oxford, will be appearing at Cambridge Junction’s J2 on Wednesday, April 27.
Visit junction.co.uk for tickets. For more on Lou, go to lousanders.com.
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