Zoe Lyons: Miss Machismo

Zoe Lyons is understandably a little annoyed with Germaine Greer. Wading into the ‘are women funny?’ debate earlier this year with a typical nose for controversy, the legendary feminist essentially argued that they’re not, and in the process she called Lyons’ comedy ‘astonishingly vicious.’

There’s little to justify that description in this set: for the most part, it’s well-written and self-lacerating observational material about the life and preoccupations of thirty-something lesbian, albeit with one eye constantly trained on life’s grubbier aspects. Portaloos are described as “stinking piss-tardises,” an ill-starred excursion into the woods for a wee is graphically described, and Switzerland is characterised as a place so antiseptically clean that the dogs there are trained to pick up their own poo.

It’s all performed at a breakneck pace and with a skill for surreal detail and amusing tangents, all of which keeps a sweaty but enthusiastic audience onside for the full hour. There’s nothing hugely original in Lyons’ choice of targets, however, and when she gets on to the subject of celebrity women, you can start to see Germaine’s point. Nigella Lawson is a “slut,” Amy Winehouse a “spunkbucket,” and a modelling career is described as an “oxymoron.”

Coming from the mouths of male comics, these sentiments would rightly be construed as misogynistic – is Lyons immune from this criticism just because she’s female? This reviewer is doubtful. But anyone looking for anecdotal evidence to counter Greer’s main thesis, that women are generally less funny than men, will find a fair amount of ammunition here.