Overcoming online hate - Brighton-bound Rosie Jones
Rosie Jones is currently on her first-ever UK tour – a tour so successful that it has already been going nearly a year, during which she was nominated for Most Outstanding Show – Melbourne Comedy Festival 2023.
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00:00 Good afternoon, and a massive pleasure this afternoon to speak to Rosie Jones. Now, Rosie,
00:06 you're having a ball, aren't you, because you are on your debut stand-up tour, and not
00:11 many stand-up tours go for more than a year, and you're just about to enter the third leg
00:16 of it, with dates, I should say, in Brighton and in East Grinstead. It must be monumental
00:22 for you. Debut tour going so well?
00:26 Oh yeah, I am having the time of my life. It's been such, such fun, and yeah, as you said,
00:40 I've been doing it for about a year now, and I think I've performed the show about a hundred
00:53 times.
00:54 Wow.
00:55 Yeah, you know what? I'm not bored of it yet.
01:00 And the response you get, people are loving it, aren't they?
01:04 Yeah, and that's my favourite part of touring, is meeting the people, it's giving them a
01:16 show and they are a lot of laughs, because that's the thing about the world and the country
01:30 right now, there's a lot of things to be grumpy and sad about, but if I can take you into
01:44 my world for one night and make you smile, laugh and forget things for a few hours, I've
01:58 done my job properly.
02:02 And you were saying beautifully that it's really noticeable lots of people come up to
02:05 you who are disabled and say thank you to you for doing what you're doing. That must
02:11 be incredibly moving when that happens.
02:14 Oh yeah, yeah, because I have cerebral palsy. I grew up in the 90s where there was no kind
02:29 of representation of disability and the disabled people you did see on TV were always the ones
02:44 who were vulnerable or victims and that's been me. I've always been confident, happy,
02:58 positive, loved, like every human.
03:04 You say happy, positive, but that's in a world of context of so much hate, isn't there, and
03:10 so much abuse, yet somehow you managed to get over that, get beyond it.
03:16 Yeah, yeah, but I do want to thank being a female comedian with a disability who was
03:30 quite vocal on their beliefs and their politics and I'm very unapologetic when sharing my
03:45 views. It opens myself up to a whole lot of abuse and every time I'm on TV you can expect
04:02 Twitter to go crazy with abuse upon me, but I keep everything in perspective and know
04:17 that it is their problem and not mine and I need to just always remind myself that it
04:31 is a small percentage and I don't do it for them, I do it for the lovely, wonderful people
04:45 who do like me, who do find me funny, who are grateful for that positive disabled representation
05:01 and those people who enjoy watching me and coming to see my shows.
05:11 And as you were saying, it comes down in the end to the fact that you can feel proud of
05:14 yourself.
05:15 That's it, I think everything in life is about perspective and just I treat negativity
05:31 the absolute same as positivity and luckily I get a lot of positive responses and reviews
05:50 to what I do, but I don't let it go to my head and just carry on doing what I do and
06:05 if I can sit back and at the end of the day be proud of what I do and believe in what
06:18 I do and think I've done a good job, that is more than enough for me.
06:29 That is absolutely fabulously said and congratulations on the massive success of this very, very
06:35 long debut tour.
06:37 The dates coming up for us are Brighton and East Grinstead.
06:41 Good luck with everything and absolutely lovely to speak to you.
06:45 Thank you so much.
06:46 Thank you, great to talk to you too.
06:51 [BLANK_AUDIO]