Mama Malone
Malone is the modern middle class real deal
After performing a stand-up comedy gig the other night, someone approached me and asked: “Are you really a single mum?” Ha ha. Like I’d thought it was such a hilarious subject matter that I’d don a pair of gold-hooped earrings and take the mickey out of them for five minutes on stage.
Yes, of course I really am a single mum! Who would lie about that? It’s not that funny a topic! (Ask anyone who’s seen my set… self-deprecating humour, gettit?) I was taking the mickey out of myself, not a minority group! (Hmm, let me check that as I’m a bit concerned that single parents may not actually be a minority group anymore.)
OK, according to God Google, yes, we single parents are (just about) still a minority group. In Britain, nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of households with dependent children are single parent families, making it 1.9 million single parents. Phew. I’d hate to think it was the norm.
“I don’t drink lattes, I love pound shops, and I get the Number 1 bus. A lot”
But a study reveals that ‘Britain is just behind the USA in numbers of children living in single parent families’.
Comedy to me is funny when it’s real. It got me thinking, what are the untruths in my comedy set? Do I make anything up just to be funny? And I realise that I have: I’ve made up that I drink coffee, which is actually a massive lie. Coffee is yuck. In the context of the joke it is funny… honest.
I also give my father a welsh accent, when in fact he was Irish. My Irish accent was funny for all the wrong reasons. My joke was something about how I knew I was middle class because I had to drink a latte when choosing furniture in the Argos catalogue. But I’m wondering maybe I’m not middle class after all. I don’t drink lattes, I love pound shops, and I get the Number 1 bus. A lot.
Then I found myself having a cry about the fact that the maintenance man hadn’t jet-washed the patio in time for my child’s birthday. Then I thought, I’ve made it! I am middle class. Either that or I’m experiencing some misplaced grief. It’s confusing for us ‘modern middle class’. We’re born into working class families, growing up with working class values but drinking lattes and eating paninis (I don’t eat paninis either).
Anyway, to answer his question, I’m the kind of person who pretends to be a coffee drinker, not about whether I am raising a child on my own! I wouldn’t lie about that? It’s not ‘kool’. It was a young handsome man who asked me, so rather than believing that he thought I looked like the type of woman who would go to any lengths to make people laugh, I would like to believe it was because he couldn’t believe I was single, never mind a mum.
