Jenny Eclair

Stand-up comedian Jenny Eclair was the first woman to win the Perrier Award – the UK’s top comedy award – in 1995. Jokes, Jokes, Jokes is Jenny’s very funny memoir about elbowing her way into the male dominated world of comedy.

Daughter of Major Derek Hargreaves (spy?) and June Hargreaves (spy’s wife?) sister of Sara (born to be Head Girl) and Ben (the usurper), Jenny’s comedy career took off via drama school, cider, sausage rolls, sleeping with men who looked like they lived under a carpet, punk poetry, anorexia, bedsit misery, waitressing and not really having a clue about anything.

This was a world before microphones, mobile phones, before everyone gave up smoking or started taking coke. Jenny Eclair was on the comedy circuit before there really was a comedy circuit and was the first woman to win the Perrier Award along the way. Still gigging to sell-out crowds forty years later, Jenny Eclair’s memoir charts her childhood, her career and the changing face of women in comedy, all told with hilarious brilliance.

Jenny is well known for her starring role on BBC 1’s Grumpy Old Women which ran for three series and was then adapted into four live shows touring across the UK and Australia, all of which Jenny co-wrote and starred in. Continuing her partnership with Judith Holder, producer of Grumpy Old Women, Jenny co-hosts the podcast Older and Wider the podcast for people who don’t know what a podcast is, a weekly ramble about life, with additional swearing.