Susan & Janice

When Comedy Lounge decided to do an all-girl issue, two names immediately sprang to mind and anyone who has seen them will know why. Together, Susan and Janice together form the funniest, most glittery and colourful female double-act of the moment. They are full of energy and always have smiles plastered across their faces.

Their partnership was born ten years ago, when they both studied drama and psychology at Chester College, part of Liverpool University. Rather than handing in the usual written projects, Susan and Janice would ask if they could perform a show instead. "And they'd let us!" exclaims Janice, "and we'd end up dressing up as Freud doing different things and getting all our friends involved. It was great fun." They recount one of their first impromptu appearances as a double-act as being part of 'Blind Date' at the student union. One of the contestants dropped out so they pretended to be cleaners who just happened to be around and were called in as last-minute replacements.

Immediately following their time at university, Susan returned to Nottingham where she did some directing and Janice went back to Ireland to work in a special needs hospice. Originally they both intended to go to separate drama schools, but they each decided to do an MA at Kings College in London instead and as Susan explains, this is where 'Susan and Janice' started to emerge as a solid partnership.

Janice: "(As women) We are taught that we're not allowed to do stuff, as simple as opening bottles and carrying things and making decisions. I do it. Everyone does it, I think. There you go. I'll have another drink now."

On applying to the college, each applicant was asked to talk about any performer whom they had seen recently and why they enjoyed it. Susan chose Steve Coogan "because of the way he did his characters" but she was politely asked to choose someone else. "But that was the kind of thing that I admired and enjoyed the most," she explains. It was never their plan to be drawn into the comedy scene and it took them a while to commit themselves to the idea but they soon discovered that it was scarier to think about doing it than actually doing it.

"We did a comedy show in our halls of residence, that was our first main comedy show. We took two plays up to Edinburgh in two years, and then we decided to do a double act, and work exclusively." "We went up with a bunch of five women and we did a play called 'Keep Young and Beautiful'," adds Janice, "and it was the first comedy thing that we'd done and it was so much more enjoyable." More enjoyable than the previous year when they had gone up to Edinburgh with a play Susan had written about schizophrenia. "People enjoyed it, but they would come in and cry, and I remember thinking 'I didn't want to make them cry!'" explains Susan, "I wanted to go 'come and see our show, it's good fun!' rather than 'come and be poignant, come and be moved'. And so Susan and Janice decided that comedy was the natural path for them to follow.

Even now, there seems to be a distinct lack of females on the London Comedy Circuit at the moment, and the female double-act is becoming an endangered species. At Susan and Janice's level there isn't a single act that comes close to what they are doing at the moment. Being exposed to such a male dominated world, Susan and Janice soon discovered that other than the obvious few that have made it big, French and Saunders, Jo Brand, Rhona Cameron, there were no real female role models on the circuit to offer them any encouragement. But on the other hand they saw that there is so much more room for women to grow and there are so many more funny women around than those that actually get hold of a microphone. It takes a long time to get from the open spot circuit to the main comedy circuit and it is very heavily male dominated. "One guy was saying to me that a lot of women do the open spots, but that not many of them stick at it," explains Susan. But it was Susan and Janice's persistence, dedication and ability to get the laughs that got them through their early days. "But sometimes its just crowd control," jokes Janice.

It's very hard for women to break out of the usual stereotypes but Susan and Janice have developed characters, which are female but are more layered than the usual bimbo characters. "Being funny isn't a quality that men would have rated in women. I don't think it's something that you expect women to do, and the kind of women that have done it have been the stereotype of ugly, fat, dykey woman. But if you look at Friends now they've got these sexy women on there being funny," says Susan. "I remember my dad saying that the only women in entertainment are very ugly women or lesbians," interrupts Janice. "I remember him saying that. He would deny that to the end now." "But Janice isn't a lesbian." Or it could just be as simple as people just not being used to seeing women in positions of power. As Janice tells us, the scales are still very much tipped in favour of male comedians. "I get annoyed when blokes say to me that things are equal now, that there is complete equality. There isn't. And comedy is an area where it really shows off. I don't know completely why."

Susan: "Margaret Thatcher was in power, but she wasn't feminine. What was she? I don't know what she was!"

In this day and age, you would expect female comics to encounter perhaps a small amount of resistance but last year as Janice tells us, they faced one of the biggest obstacles they have come up against as women so far. "One of our promoters told us that when we played (in Edinburgh) and were on at 4pm, the reason we were on at that time was because we were women." In other words, the venue didn't want to put female comedy on any later than the late afternoon. Apart from their obvious outrage, they managed to overcome any problems this could have caused. It changed the dynamics of their audience, "because they were unlikely to have been drinking," says Janice, and people generally don't go and see comedy at four in the afternoon. "People were bringing their kids to it and every time I said something, everyone would go 'oh' and look over at the kid. We always told people," continues Janice, "and made sure that the box office said to people when they brought in kids, but we had a lovely response from most of them."

Having obtained a much later time slot the year later, Susan and Janice learnt that because they were women, they had to prove themselves to be funny and worth the risk. "That's one of those very practical issues that's affected us," Janice tells us. "I think in every walk of life it's more difficult for people to take you seriously as a woman," adds Susan, "and at the end of the day men have more guts and more confidence. I think that's something else that stops a lot of women carrying on. They put on more pressure and are more critical of themselves." "It might be just as simple as people aren't used to it," suggests Janice. "If you see a stand up walking on stage, you think, 'oh here's another one'. But if you see a stand up walking on stage, and she's a woman, you think - 'here's a woman!' There's that little extra leap. Immediately everybody is thinking something different."

Amazingly, they have even found that some female comedy reviewers take a dim view of funny women. Susan and Janice got a bad review during one Edinburgh festival and were told that it was because the reviewer in question doesn't like women. "Why did she review it?" questions Susan, "you never get a comedy reviewer who doesn't like men. The majority of the comedy audiences used to be men, but now more women go out and that makes it easier."

Janice: "A lot of people used to say 'oh, I love your show. But women can't be funny'. It's quite an acceptable thing for people to say, it seems. Which makes me think - do you not have any friends?! Hello?!"

Some of Susan and Janice's sketches are being featured in a book by a female author who is writing what is supposed to be the nemesis to Bridget Jones and in particular, she is writing about the two nuns. "I think it's going to be quite an intellectual book that everyone is going to have to study," laughs Janice. They are also in a German textbook, which teaches Germans how to speak English. "We are hoping they will learn 'Can I have two tickets to see Susan and Janice, please?' So we will be a big hit with German teenagers."

As a double-act, they have gone a step further than most and are staging a charity comedy gig once a month in London's Cochrane Theatre. "We're getting brilliant people coming along to do it as well. Because we can't pay any of the acts they all come and do it for the fun of it, which I think makes them even more relaxed," says Janice. So as well as making money for charity and getting a friendly audience to perform in front of, they also get to meet their peers in terms of sketch groups.

It is obvious that Susan and Janice are close friends both on and off stage but the dynamics of their relationship differ from those of many other womens' as Susan explains, "We always take the piss out of each other, which is actually a very male thing to do. We do it all the time, and people think 'oh, Susan and Janice aren't getting on very well', but it's what we do all the time." "If we weren't getting on, we'd be really nice to each other," Janice agrees.

Three Wishes (starring Ben Moor and Janice Phayre) will be on Radio 4 on 1st May at 2.15pm.