Kate Copstick
Words: Curio   
Monday, 03 September 2007

Curio meets the Festival’s most feared arts critic.

Image If Kate Copstick is sitting in your show – beware! She’s one of the most respected and feared arts critics in the media today. She’s also a former lawyer, actress, writer, television producer, celebrity chef, stand-up and purveyor of porn. Curio speaks with one of the Festival’s most outspoken voices.

Kate, you’ve been reviewing the arts for over seven years. What makes a good review?
Yes, I have. I think that any reviewer, no matter what the subject matter is and no matter what their personal opinion is, owes it to the people who buy the newspaper and the people who are performing in the show, or have written the show, to have some kind of a vocabulary within the genre that you are criticising. There’s no point in saying ‘this was rubbish’, especially with comedy, I think there are many things that can make a show good or bad. There are many hidden things.

So what then is the balance between what you know already about the comedy world and what you are continually researching and finding out?
As a reviewer you just have to keep going and watching. You have to watch new acts and new comics coming up. You have to keep seeing old acts as they are constantly re-inventing themselves. I don’t think its remotely necessary to go off and research the technicalities of comedy. I think it has helped me as a reviewer that I have performed. I’ve done presenting, stand-up, cabaret, acting. That helps. I know the tricks, I know about trying to hold an audience, I know the ways performers cheat, I know what a fantastic privilege and what fun it is to be up there. So I really don’t cut anybody any slack if they’re smug or if they’re not trying.

What makes a great reviewer?
I don’t think there is such a thing as a ‘great’ reviewer. Reviewers should be passionate about what they are writing about. You must really care what you are writing about as a genre. Unless you really care then you do not deserve to be writing about it, because you have to have the capacity to be incredibly excited by a performance. You need to able to sing those five-star reviews and snarl at the one-star reviews. In theatre you need to have a certain breadth because there’s no point if all you like is Oscar Wilde and Gilbert and Sullivan, then there’s an awful lot of 21st Century theatre that is going to pass you by. You must have an open mind. If you can’t open your mind to something, then you must put your hand up and say: ’I just don’t get this.’

Does the public accept a reviewer putting their hand up in this way?
Of course they do. The next question the public would ask is ‘why the fuck did they send that reviewer?’ But this is more of a problem with comedy than theatre as comedy is regarded as the ‘poor cousin’ of theatre. That is very, very wrong as not everybody who is a huge Jim Vine fan is going to get Phil Kay. Not everyone who would walk over hot coals to get Rob Newman would enjoy Brendon Burns. If there is a performer that I just don’t get then I would say to my newspaper, I can’t review him.

You’re renowned for your bad show reviews. In 2004, The Liar website dubbed you “Shit Journalist of the Year.” How is it being on the end of a bad review?
I’m constantly harangued, most especially for the bad reviews I’ve given. I’ve been harangued for good reviews I’ve given. Comedy is subjective, but what I write I back it up. We live in a car-crash culture and people want to see car-crashes. People go and see one-star shows because they want to see rubbish and to see people struggling. Very often it’s just people who think they are brilliant. I don’t think I have the right to stop people seeing these shows. The only thing I can do, is tell people how angry it made me in the most entertaining way, and then if people are interested they will go and see the show.

What’s some of the most savage reviews you’ve given?
I remember saying of one show: “It brought new depths of meaning to the phrase ‘give me back my money!’” … I referred to one comedy show as “I would rather have my ovaries removed through my ears without the benefit of anaesthetic, than ever see any of these comics again” … Then, after one female performer’s show I said: “Having seen this female in action, violence against women can sometimes be a very good thing.” The Scotsman made me tone that comment down to something like, “Coming out of this show I didn’t just want a stiff drink, I wanted a radical hysterectomy!”

Is this your natural personality oozing out in these scathing comments?
Yes. I’m not going to hold back. If a show is shit, it’s shit. People pay money. I’m not going to be foul about a show if they are just hopeless. There is a difference between ‘hopeless’ and ‘incredibly smug’.

The issue of value for money brings us onto a wider subject: What are your views on the Fringe Festival as it stands today?
When the big comedy managements came up in the early nineties, they changed the Fringe more than anything and for the worst. They created the ‘comedy section’ and it just got bigger and bigger. Now something frightening like 80% of all those that read the Fringe brochure, only read the comedy section. They don’t even look at new acts. Just people ‘off the telly’. The Fringe has become industrial. It is just an industry trade fare and what it means is the ‘little people’, the less well-known are much, much more likely to fall through the net. The big comedy people are pricing people out; they are pulling the focus; they are emphasising chopping everything up into an hour’s slot.

And with Ricky Gervais playing the Festival …?
I have a big problem with that.

But as someone who works in the media, you know that having Gervais on your front cover will get readers over someone like say, Brendon Burns.
But I hope that people will have some form of integrity. Gervais is not a good stand-up. He just got famous through two very good television series. And to take a billboard the size of Holyrood Park at the end of Princes Street, to say ‘Gervais at the Castle is sold out’ … I don’t know why he just doesn’t piss into the mouths of every other comic from the Festival.

Well you’ve not thrown in your day job yet so there must still be plenty about the Festival that you enjoy?
I absolutely love the Festival. The intensity of it. I love comedy and you get more comedy in [Edinburgh] than in any other place this month.

Now on a tangent, I hear you’re writing a book about pornography. I’d have thought that you would have been vehemently opposed to such things?
I love pornography. I’ve always watched porn, I love porn, I sometimes make porn and one of the documentaries I make is called Porn Week and one of the things we do on that is take people who are prejudiced about porn (like you Curio), and take them on a porn film set and one of the most wonderful noises in the world is hearing someone’s mind being opened by a new experience.

But surely there’s a flip side to the porn industry?
I’ve never seen a bad side. I think people who think women are exploited [in porn] are 100% wrong. The women have the power. The people who are really exploited are the punters. The men aren’t treated nearly as well as the women, but the people I have worked with over the years are smart, fun, intelligent. These women are not doing it because they are forced to or it’s all they can do. The men are not doing it because they are sleazebags. Several I know are happily married. The directors are not sleazebags. Nobody tries to make anyone do what they don’t want to do. The health checks are stringent.

Does your view on porn generate a lot of controversial reaction from others?
Massive. This country is incredibly narrow-minded, whereas if you go to countries like Spain or Germany, a porn actress is an actress who fucks on-screen. In the UK, she’s a prostitute who does it in front of the camera. We have terrible attitudes to porn in the UK. We are one step away from the Victorian age.

All this outspokenness … is it all for entertainment?
It’s honesty. More people should be more honest and the world would be a much more straight-forward and much more happy place.

Kate Copstick will continue to review the best and worst at the Edinburgh Festival.