Female standup: Nina Conti

female standup: Nina Conti

I recent did a blog piece about a great new female standup, Shappi Khorsandi. I first heard Nina on the Australian Psychology program All in the Mind on comedy.

There is something great about, attractive and witty young women dominating in this sphere, with it tradition association with bad taste humour of Bernard Manning (an outright racist?) and Ricky Geeves (having a go at the disabled?)

It is easy to get distracted by things which are wrong in the world and this blog piece, is all about a very funny original comedian who is wrestling with her inner demons in an insightful and relatively in-offensive way.

Nina's background is quite colourful (being the daughter of an internationally famous actor and the "housewives favourite": Tom Conti), Nina Conti's wiki entry mentions nice upper-middle class places like Hampstead and UEA:

Nina Conti (born 1974, in London) is a British actress, comedienne and ventriloquist. Her onstage puppet sidekick is a depressed monkey named Monk.

She was born and grew up in Hampstead, London, the daughter of actors Tom Conti and Kara Wilson. She studied at the UEA (University of East Anglia)

The following is from the transcript of the All in the Mind podcast:

[Excerpt from Nina Conti's stage show...]

Nina: Hi, gosh there's such a lot of people in here, I can't believe I'm going to show you my monkey. Oh, Monk come on we're on, come out.

Monk: Do they know it's ventriloquism?

Nina: Yeah, they catch on quick, Monk.

Monk: Do they know how I feel about it?

Nina: No.

Monk: I think it's ridiculous and I want to do straight stand-up.

Nina: So shall we start with a joke?

Monk: No, I hate jokes.

Nina: Come on, we'll tell a joke. Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?

Monk: Because he was dead. Don't laugh, it happens you know.

Nina: How many monkeys does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Monk: Monkeys screw in trees, not light bulbs.

Nina: You're awful.

Nina Conti: And so the dirt jokes work their way in and everything through the monkey, it's impossible not to.

Reginald Hunter: Shit, I might get me a monkey, man. If it can free Nina up like that, man, what would I say if I had me a monkey?

Nina Conti: I don't think you need one.

I think Reginald Hunter has hit the nail on the head.

ventriloquist |venˈtriləkwist|

noun

a person who can speak or utter sounds so that they seem to come from somewhere else, esp. an entertainer who makes their voice appear to come from a dummy of a person or animal.

ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from modern Latin ventriloquium (from Latin venter ‘belly’ + loqui ‘speak’ ) + -ist .