The Original ‘Big Sister’: An interview with Donna Spence

Hey, hey, I’m Donna Spence. I was one of the female comedians who came out around 20–23 years ago. Out with Quincy, Mr. Cee, and all the rest of them and done many projects, I think, definitely for the New Black Film Collective as well. I toured all around the UK and worked abroad, yeah, and I left comedy like 2019, I left stand-up, but I still host and I still do events, but yeah, still was a great scene then.

I actually fell into it. I didn’t actually plan to be a comedian, as most people now plan; I actually fell into it. Ninia Benjamin, she was doing a project called… Give me the mic. It was in Dalston, and she said “Come,  just fill in the numbers. I need some people” I said “I don’t know how to tell jokes” She goes “Yeah, yeah, you’re funny. Just come”. So I used to go to all their events. Jeff Schumann used to go to all these comedy shows, and I was always the biggest mouth in the place, bringing the most people, so they just thought it’d be great for me to be a comedian. Everyone kept telling me to be a comedian, but I just couldn’t see how that would be possible. And then I went and done this event, and actually I came first. Jimmy Carr, the famous Jimmy Carr now, I beat him at the time, but Jimmy, good on him. he’s worked hard to get where he is, and well done to him. And so I beat him at this competition and then after that I literally wasn’t going to do anything and I got booked straight after that by Jeff Schumann and another guy called Kwaku and then after that I saw Angie Le Mar and I said to Angie Le Mar, I asked her for some tips and then she took me under her wing and she started managing me and then for the next, and then I was on Choice FM radio, and we used to do the midnight shift, the ladies room, and then the doors just opened up and I at that time I don’t know if I could handle it I really don’t think I can handle it because you get wooshed into this thing that you have no idea about, where it’s going, what it is and you’re just moving because there wasn’t that many female comedians then anyway, there isn’t now to be fair but there wasn’t that many then so the doors were really wide open and I was really blessed to have Angie Le Mar guiding me so I was spoilt.

We done a thing called, we started off at Stratford Circus, Big Sister which is a spoof of Big Brother. So a lot of the scenes we wrote in that was everyday life things that happened in everyday life, so Quincy was part of that; Owen, who’s passed away; God Rest his soul; Mr. Cee; there were so many, because it was like nine of us new comics, and we wanted to develop something because there was all these older comics and they wouldn’t open the doors for us, so we had to open our own doors, so Stratford allowed us to do that. Stratford allowed us to go ahead. Stratford’s always been very open, to be honest, because they’ve let in new Talent, old Talent just as long as you’ve got a talent they open the door, so Stratford was really, really good for that to be honest.

100% I think anyone, I think if anyone, if they really work it together, I think it could blow the scene. I think that would be the new vibe, that would be the new place. I think you could do that internationally, you’ll find that people come over because, really, when you start booking comics from Belgium and America and wherever, you know Stratford could be the place for that. That is the new Hackney Empire; it could definitely be; there’s no two ways about that. Like, have a vision and that will come true, and if you watch a child at Christmas or a child when the child wants something, a child would go, “I want that bike, I want that bike.” And they just stare at the TV and they stare at everything to get that bike, and they get, they get it, and it’s exactly the same, like that’s what was for me for Hackney Empire; that was it for me when I was at the Apollo in America; that was it for me when I was like, “Oh my gosh,” when I created my own shows, it was like, Wow!

Annette Fagan, who’s another one of my favourite comics, Annette Fagan came to one of my shows; she wasn’t a comic then, she came to one of the shows; I think we were doing, Quincy and I played Bonnie and Clyde, our characters as Bonnie and Clyde at that point. So Quincy’s got a love thing with me; everybody in the comedy circuit knows, nobody’s allowed to chat me up; I’m his girl. He can have 50, 000 women, but in the comedy world, I am his woman; nobody’s allowed to chat me up. Right, that’s it. So we’re Bonnie and Clyde; we’ve done this thing where we’re Bonnie and Clyde; there’s a tour that we were doing, and Annette Fagan was in, I think she was in Leeds when we done this tour; we were in Leeds or Birmingham. I think it was in Leeds, and she was in the audience, and she came to me, she goes “Thank you so much.” She goes “I’ve always been told that I was too raw, but you let me know that with your rawness, I can be a comedian, and so I’m going to go for it,” and there she is, she’s in it. So there are moments like that that are in your face you kind of go, Thank goodness for that, because had she not, she’d have sat there believing that she was something that she couldn’t do. And my thing is be who you want to be. If you look at people like Grace Jones, Grace Jones is raw, she’s in your face, she’s a bit eccentric, but she’s still known all over the world, and there’s nobody like her. So we have to know that we are great. Whatever you do, decide you’re great. I may not be somebody’s cup of tea, but I’m somebody else’s hardo bread and jollof rice. You know what I mean? I’m somebody else’s. So you’re not gonna get on with everybody, and not everybody’s gonna like you, but don’t be scared to be who you be, so that is probably a message I’d want to say to people: be who you be because life is short or long with the wrong people.