If laughter is medicine then Zoë Coombs Marr is my new favorite drug, writes Maeve Galea, who sat down for a crack-up confessional and snoop through her phone with the comedian ahead of her Amazon Prime Video special Bossy Bottom.
My Amazon Original stand-up special is called Bossy Bottom. I would describe myself as… the clue is in the show’s title.
You will enjoy my show if you… are gay. Also if you’re not, and you like jokes, general mucking around and surprises. Seriously, there are some things in there that I honestly can’t believe we got away with.
Being a comedian is a lot like… being a new dad. Everyone expects you to tell dumb jokes all the time and you keep really terrible hours.
The best heckle I’ve ever received was… I got “OK, boomer-ed” by a teenager recently, which was horrifying, but he did put up his hand and say “may I say something?” first. A heckler asking for consent, now that’s really showing his age.
The worst heckle I’ve ever received was… see above. Sure, I partied pretty hard in my youth and I’ve spent a lot of time in the sun, but I’m not a boomer! Jesus.
If I wasn’t a comedian, I would be… an acid casualty dropout living in an alternative community in the mountains making macramé hammock tree houses.
I don’t leave the house without… a struggle. For something you do every day, why is it so complicated?
Before I go to bed, I always… spend a couple of hours decompressing by scrolling through the human centipede of Instagram stories and Twitter news articles to make me question my place in the universe and really tire those eyes out.
My biggest regret is… letting a receptionist at a tattoo parlour do my tattoo because it was pretty small and she “reckoned” she could do it.
Watch my show because… it’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it! And I’d be so grateful.
The last text I sent “Why am I like this?”
The last thing I googled “How to find Google Search history.”
The last photo I took “A page of my notebook. I’m working on a new stand-up show at the moment and my notes look like they were made by a serial killer or a schizophrenic mathematician.”
The last call I ignored “Every call. Who calls? Text me, please.”
The last thing I wrote in my notes “Just ’cos Lizzo plays the flute doesn’t mean the flute is cool. Lizzo is cool. (I play the flute.)”
The last thing I ordered on Uber Eats “Burgers and chips, and I don’t even think I was hung over.”
The last emoji I used “I want to say something interesting like the otter or the fortune cookie, but it was just the winky tongue one – at the top of this page. Remember?”
The last Instagram I posted “A really sexy video of me pretending to be a chihuahua [as above].”
Bossy Bottom launches on Amazon Prime Video on April 10. This article originally appeared in the April 2020 issue of marie claire.
