Sara Pascoe, comedian and writer
4/19/202651 min
Sara Pascoe is a comedian and writer who has appeared on programmes including QI, Taskmaster and the Great British Sewing Bee. She is also a screenwriter and the author of three books including her debut novel Weirdo which won the inaugural Jilly Cooper Prize for fiction last year.
Sara was born in Dagenham and grew up in Romford. She joined a drama club when she was 14 and set her heart on an acting career but failed to get a place at drama school. She read English Literature at the University of Sussex and after graduating took on various jobs to make ends meet including a stint as a London tour bus guide.
In 2007 she performed her first comedy gig to an audience of 12 people in a south London pub. Even though no-one laughed at her jokes, she was well and truly bitten by the stand-up bug and the following year was joint runner-up at the Funny Women Awards. In 2010 she performed her first show at the Edinburgh Festival and appeared on the BBC’s Live at the Apollo two years later.
She is currently touring her latest stand-up tour, I Am A Strange Gloop. Sara lives in London with her husband Steen Raskopoulos and their two children.
DISC ONE: Rhythm Of Life - Sammy Davis Jr. And Ensemble (from Sweet Charity) DISC TWO: Never Forget - Take That DISC THREE: Telemachus - Pascoe & Martin DISC FOUR: Scar Tissue - Red Hot Chilli Peppers DISC FIVE: Gett Off - Prince & The New Power Generation DISC SIX: Rock Star - N.E.R.D DISC SEVEN: Best Friend - 50 Cent DISC EIGHT: Wizardry - Self Esteem
BOOK CHOICE: 1984 by George Orwell LUXURY ITEM: A typewriter CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Telemachus - Pascoe & Martin
Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Paula McGinley
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsLauren Laverne· Host0:00
Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes twenty-eight days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening. [waves crashing] [instrumental music] My castaway this week is the comedian and writer Sara Pascoe. Her comedy is omnivorous, taking her from stints on crowd-pleasing shows like QI, Taskmaster, and The Great British Sewing Bee to critically acclaimed stand-up, which often blends the intellectual with the observational. One successful Edinburgh run riffed on nature and the possibility of her boyfriend cheating on her with her doppelganger. She's also a screenwriter and the author of three books, including her debut novel, Weirdo, which last year won the inaugural Jilly Cooper Prize for Fiction. She was born in Dagenham and raised by a single mother, who, she says, delights in telling everyone how unfunny she was as a child. In fact, she chanced upon stand-up after seeing her then-boyfriend's turn