Cult past of Nighty Night star

Nighty Night creator Julia Davis has revealed that she was once in a fundamentalist religious cult who believed she was possessed by the devil.

The comedian says she joined the group after a ‘demoralising’ two-year spell with glandular fever cut her off from her friends and forced her to abandon university at the age of 20.

Davis, who had always been religious and had, as a child, fantasised about being a nun, said: ‘After I got ill the real obsession began.

‘I joined this odd religious group, who were pretty fundamentalist and they told me, “The reason you're ill is because Satan is in you.”

‘Part of me is quite cynical but there's another part that wants to believe stuff like that.

‘I was told that if I renounced certain things, I'd get better. They said, “This music is evil. This colour is evil.” They meant the Beatles, and red - everything that makes you feel alive, basically.

‘I told them I wanted to be an actress and they said, “That way madness lies.”

‘Then they staged this weird weekend retreat which was almost like an exorcism."

Davis’s revelations come in a major interview with Scotland on Sunday to promote the second series of her dark, award-winning sitcom which starts on BBC Three at 10.30pm on Tuesday.

And she added that her background – that was otherwise very suburban and repressed – helps her with her comedy writing.

‘I don't think there's a single comedian who isn't pretty f****d up in some way,’ she said.

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Published: 4 Sep 2005