Last night myself and comedian Ellie Gibson performed at the Hay Festival dressed as giant vaginas. It was pretty much as sophisticated as it sounds. For an hour we told jokes, sang songs, danced enthusiastically (badly), and pretended to be hipster dads who were experts in childbirth. In short, we twatted about, while 500 strangers laughed, cheered and nodded along in solidarity. I'm pretty sure Margaret Atwood's event was very similar.
Apart from that man in the front row who had his head in his hands, poor Carl, there was a sense that we and the audience were all in this chaotic mess of parenthood together. I mean, there's nothing quite like belting out a song about front bottoms to really unite a crowd.
Whilst our show is of course, carefully scripted, rehearsed and meticulously polished, it's the audience participation and responses that provided the biggest laughs. It's our favourite part. And last night was no exception. During the show we asked the audience to write down their Scummy Mummy confessions on cards and then we read out the top stories. We had a live Scum Off. The audience voted, via cheers to choose Hay's best/worst Scummy Mummy. Our Queen of Scum turned out to be Jane - who told us that she "drank too much at school sports day and fell over in the mum's race!" We bow down to you Queen Jane.
That was the biggest surprise and thing I have learnt from my time at Hay. Whilst we expected the Hay crowd to be all well-behaved intellectuals, who dressed in linen, and ate organic hummus - (and you were) turns out you also love a bit of filth and are absolute scumbags. And we love you all so much more for it. Because no matter how hard we all try, we're all Scummy Mummies sometimes, even you, Carl.