Event: Daylight Sessions
Ysella Sims headed to The Hall on Friday 6th to check out Daylight Comedy, with Josie Long and Harriet Dyer, hosted by Angie Belcher
It’s Friday lunchtime, and outside, on the cobbles of Stepcote Hill, the sun is shining. There’s a steady flow of parents manoeuvring buggies and holding the hands of little people, moving towards The Hall. A sign on the door reassures us that the gig finishes in time for the school run.
Inside, a combination of funk, festoon and fairy lighting, warm brickwork and a glinting glitterball creates a feeling of glamour, of a night out in the daytime. There’s a happy burr of conversation as parents rock babies on hips, watch over toddlers and chat while nursing babies and drinks.
The Daylight Sessions are the brainchild of Exeter producer and mother Lizzy Humber. With Arts Council funding she’s produced a series of poetry, music and comedy gigs designed to be accessible to sleep – and company – deprived parents and carers: ‘Grown up gigs where kids are welcome!’ Judging by the number of people in the room, it’s an idea that’s hitting home in Exeter.
Angie Belcher, a comedian, parent, and founder of Bristol daytime comedy club Aftermirth, introduces Josie Long to the stage. Josie bounces on in her favourite fleece. “Who’s tired?” she asks. “Who wants me to hold their baby?”
Her act strikes a balance between support – “You’re all doing so well though, you’re doing amazing”; despair – “It’s hard to be a parent now. Everywhere you take the kids there are signs saying these things are dying, and the world is on fire. It’s like turning up to a boot sale at 12pm when all the Barbies have gone!”; and outrage – “How can you have community when there’s no space for community because everything’s built for profit?”
She is warm and frenetic, with an infectious energy. People are laughing, moving about, eating their lunch. A mother in front of me cradles her sleeping baby, a couple of dads lean against the wall, holding pints. A toddler wanders towards the stage and reaches for the standard lamp, gently rocking it. A nearby parent puts out a hand to steady it, smiling as the toddler’s parent approaches to steer them away.
Josie tells us how having a concussion and feeling drunk for a month had made dry January the easiest one ever. “Besides,” she asks, “who wants to have full capacity at this time?” The room laughs conspiratorially. She finishes up on a positive note: “Enough will be wonderful to keep going,” she tells us.
The atmosphere is supportive and collaborative. A parent-artist sitting next to me catches Lizzy during the break to share that she recently performed a poem – “I never thought of myself as a poet!” – developed at one of Lizzy’s M/others on the Mic sessions in Somerset. They are both keen to give each other credit. “I wouldn’t have done it without you,” says the parent.
All featured images courtesy of Lizzy Humber, photographed by Emily Appleton.
Josie has had a five-hour journey from Glasgow (“the Exeter of the central belt!”), and has a meeting and three other gigs to fit in today. Going against convention, Lizzy has programmed her, the headliner, to go first. “It means that the parents who have to go early get to see the headliner,” says Lizzy. It’s this positive and flexible approach that makes her events accessible for parents and parent-artists.
Whereas Josie’s work is political and grounded in the now, Harriet Dyer’s is a contrast of welcome distraction, inventiveness, silliness and nonsense: “I’m very working class but recently I got a chauffeur because he was cheap. He’s got a pipe in his head. Don’t employ him if you’re sensitive to the cold, because he has to have the sunroof open all the time.”
Proudly neurodivergent, she regularly skewers off on tangents: “Oh, sidenote! These gigs are like the inside of my head!”
“Last time I came to Exeter,” she tells us, “the first thing I saw when I got out the car was a seagull eating a rat.”
She’s a high energy, physical performer, laughing at her own jokes and loving a bit of music and wordplay: “Papoose is worse than moist” – “Panty loons!” she says, singing the chorus to Salt and Pepa’s Push it! as we join in.
“Well done for being here and off your phones and being present,” she says, before telling us, “I was in Nando’s – I know, face of a vegan, morals of a sausage.”
Afterwards the room is full of positive energy as people gather to chat and collect themselves to go back out into the world, feeling a little bit more held and a little bit happier.
Daytime comedy? It’s a yes from me!
Find out more about Lizzy’s work and sign up to her newsletter here on her website.
Josie Long is a political comedian committed to social justice, writer, podcaster and mother. She’s bringing her new show, Now is the Time of Monsters, to Exeter Phoenix in November. Tickets here.
Harriet Dyer is the 2024 award winner of the Channel 4 Sean Lock comedy award and has appeared on Live at The Apollo, Comedy Central Live and The Russell Howard Hour. She’s bringing her new show, Easily Distra…, to Exeter Phoenix in November. Tickets here.