Comedian Julie Jay set to play Waterside Theatre

“I originally wrote this show two years ago, because I am a massive Britney Spears fan.” she said.

“I’ve always been a huge super fan of Britney Spears, and you know, we’ve always had a lot in common, myself and Britney, like she was in the Mickey Mouse Club and I was in the poetry club, etc. There were just so many similarities there. We were both early 80s Sagittarius babies, you know, there was definitely a lot of common ground. So I wrote it two years ago pre-COVID.”

Julie has supported comics such as Tommy Tiernan and Des Bishop. She last visited Derry when she supported Father Ted hero Ardal O’Hanlon at the Millennium Forum in 2019. Julie describes her show as a “love letter” to Britney Spears.

“I am also married to a comedian, his name is Fred Cook,” said Julie.

“The two of us have had, I suppose we’ve been on a bit of a hiatus for the last couple of years because of a little thing called COVID. We’re back kicking now, and I am back with my new tour, which is my first ever play; so it is a little bit different.

“It’s looking back on the 90s, and as a teenage girl, Britney Spears was what you aspired to be, because in our minds that is what was desirable; it was Britney. Obviously over the last two years, with everything that has evolved with her story, I think a lot of things are being revisited now.

“Even when my play opens, it’s Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, and how that scandal is viewed in such a different light now than it would have been then. So it’s actually completely changed the play and now it’s really an examination of 90s noughties-misogyny. The story of Britney is a device that I use to talk about these issues. We love Britney and we still have our Britney music.”

Most recently, Julie has written a radio series for BBC Sounds and BBC Gaeilge called ‘Celtic Kweens.’ Before becoming a standup, Julie taught English and Irish Literature to secondary school pupils. She says her students inspired her to pursue her talent and to go full time.

“The students used to come to my gigs,” she said.

“They were like, ‘You know what Julie, you only have one life, you may as well do this full time.’ You know, it’s time to make a career choice when the students have started to come to your gigs. So I was like, okay, it’s time to definitely just choose one road here.

“The last year I was teaching, I was teaching in a school in Dublin. A few of my Leaving Cert students came to my gig and I just said, ‘Oh, no, I need to just stop teaching now. So they encouraged me to kind of go full time with it; so that’s why I went full time.”

If you would like to attend the show at the Waterside Theatre on Friday April 8. Please contact their booking office on: 028 7131 4000 or visit the website at www.watersidetheatreni.com. You can follow Julie Jay on Facebook or Instagram @juliejaycomedy. Com