Female comedians still feel unsafe performing at night, Amy Gledhill has said, after revealing that a man was thrown out of one of her gigs for masturbating.

The comic told Radio 4's Woman's Hour that touring at the level where she can't afford a tour manager or support act, there have 'definitely been instances where I felt quite unsafe in some of these environments'.

Gledhill, who, who won the Edinburgh Comedy Award last year with a show that included a routine about her being groped on a train, began touring solo in 2022. 

She recalled an incident on tour, where she became aware of a 'kerfuffle' in the crowd but carried on performing, thinking 'it was just someone getting up to go to the toilet'. 

After the show, however, she was messaged by an audience member who apologised for causing the disruption but explained that 'we had to move because there was a man pleasuring himself in the audience.'

Gledhill told presenter Kylie Pentelow that: 'I was going all round the country on my own. And this guy knows exactly where I'm going because I advertise it very openly.

'And I suddenly felt, "oh right, of course, I need to remember safety". So at other venues I have to make sure that a member of staff would just walk me to my car, things like that.'

Male comedians 'generally, don't have to think about that sort of thing … when male comedians go on tour, they take condoms. And females, we take rape alarms. And that's the biggest difference in gender in comedy,’ she added.

'I think women are doing so much better, we're getting headline slots, we're on TV a lot, we're creating amazing work. But there's a gulf in personal safety.'

Gledhill reported the audience member. However, she was told that she had insufficient evidence and that he wouldn't be arrested 'unless we could film him in another venue doing that'.

Describing the incident as 'a real eye-opening thing' to happen 'in my place of work', she stressed that 'of course, I really want me audience to be a safe space for women’.

Elsewhere in the interview, Gledhill recalled being 'angered' at effectively losing a slot on a prestigious showcase at the 2023 Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, when a man heckled her throughout her tightly timed seven-minute set, 'from the second I got on stage.

'Then he stood up and was coming towards the stage, and [security] removed him. But it took exactly seven minutes. And as soon as he got out, I went "right, well anyway, my name's Amy ..." There was a huge clock because they're so tight for time, the clock was flashing zero and I looked to the side and the stage manager was like: you’ve got to get off.'

Laughing ruefully, she recalled thinking: 'Right, well, I've got jet-lag for this!'

Gledhill begins a 12-night residency of her Comedy Award-winning show Make Me Look Fit On The Poster at the Soho Theatre in London on January 27.

She also  told Woman's Hour that when sharing the groping story, she did not want to underplay its impact upon her.

'That's really important,' she said. 'I think that's something I wouldn't have been able to do as a newer comedian because you have to be able to hold that space and not instantly puncture everything with a joke. You have to be able to give it the weight it deserves.

'There's a few moments in the show where I have to be quite vulnerable and strong at the same time and say this happened, this isn't OK but then pad it with comedy around it. It's not a sad show, I really want to point that out, we do have a really good time!'

Despite her concerns about safety, Gledhill, who has also been Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated for The Delightful Sausage with her double-act partner Chris Cantrill, reckons that in her decade as a comedian, 'being a woman in comedy has thankfully got a little bit better'.

She expressed a familiar frustration to Pentelow that 'when I first started, they would never have two women on the bill because they would assume the audience couldn't tell us apart. Even if our stand-up was completely different, we looked completely different, different accents, different backgrounds. 

'They were like, "put one on in the first half, one in the second half". You're kind of considered a novelty act in a lot of ways and in green rooms, often people would come in and say, "Oh, whose girlfriend are you?"

'"I'm the headline act, actually."

'Nowadays, there's so many brilliant women in comedy it's an absolute pleasure to have this community and there can be loads of us on a bill … There used to be a joke, if there's more than two or three women on a bill it's for a women's charity.

'But now, you can't stop us. There's loads of us. We're taking over!’

Gledhill also appears on Live At The Apollo next week and last year piloted a Channel 4 Blap, Toads, based on her debut stand-up show The Girl Before The Girl You Marry.

- by Jay Richardson