Top comedy in store with Josie Lawrence at the Steyning Festival

But she will not be alone next Saturday night (May 24) when she arrives for her Steyning Festival gig ‘A Serious Night Out’.

The Comedy Store Players travel with her and they are all trading their famous West End home in Piccadilly Circus for one night only to come down to the south coast.

It’s not Josie’s first visit to the south coast, though.

“I am looking forward to visiting, as I am not very familiar with Steyning and the Sussex Downs – not yet,” said Josie. “But I do know Brighton. It’s a fun place and I love it. When the money started coming in from TV years ago I looked in Kemptown for a flat but the one I found needed too much doing to it. I had always wanted to be by the sea. Ah well!”

Josie shot to stardom as a class act on the popular TV improvisation show, Whose Line is it Anyway?, hosted by Clive Anderson. The series started out on radio with John Sessions and Stephen Fry as regulars.

It was hugely successful when Channel 4 took it over for a ten-series television run and it has spawned copy cat versions all over the world, including the United States and Kapse to Senario (Burn the Script!) in Greece in 2011 and Vedetään hatusta  (Let’s Pull from a Hat!) in Finland in 2010.

A lot of the original performers on ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’ have had an ongoing relationship with the Comedy Store Players, including stars like Josie Lawrence herself, Sandi Toksvig, Stephen Fry and Comedy Store turns like Neil Mullarkey, Richard Vranch and Paul Merton.

In fact, the Comedy Store reads like the unofficial home of modern day British comedy. Nearly every famous name has guest performed with them at some time or another. Eddie Izzard describes them as “some of the funniest improvisers in the world”. And Phill Jupitus, who drops in to perform from time to time, has said: “I learned a great deal while working with the Players, sadly nothing about comedy or performing!”

Amazingly, Josie and the core group of performers have been involved right from the start all those years ago. And the Comedy Store Players proudly display the Guiness Book of Records stamp on their website that officially confirms they are ‘the world’s longest-running comedy show with the same cast.’

“That’s what makes it work so well,” said Josie. “We know each other and bounce off each other perfectly. The lads are like my brothers by now.”

One of the ‘brothers’, Neil Mullarkey, was a huge hit at the last Steyning Festival and decided to bring some of the Comedy Store Players back with him for 2014.

“We have kept going for nearly 29 years and still manage to make each other laugh at every single show,” said Neil, who used to live locally. He is looking forward to showing the rest of the gang the delights of Sussex.

He says he lives and breathes ‘improv’ and cites Mike Myers (of ‘Wayne’s World’ fame) as his biggest inspiration.

“Mike introduced me to ‘improv’ and taught me the skills and ethos, which I now use to help people in business situations as well.”

Neil says his corporate communications sessions use the basics of improvisation and help businesses perform better.

Strangely though, Josie, despite being famous for her ‘improv’ comedy skills, does not view herself as a comedian at all.

“I was performing at the same place years ago, at the Donmar Warehouse. I never did stand up, I sang. It was late one night and they were short of a woman for the act. So I got hooked in.”

“I was never driven to do comedy, I wanted to be an actress,” she said.

“I was at Dartington college, and of course, as part of our training we had to do improvisation so I knew I enjoyed making people laugh.”

Indeed, Josie Lawrence, the actress, has excelled in some high profile roles and has had long stints with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she played Kate in the Taming of the Shrew, winning the Dame Peggy Ashcroft award for Best Actress, Dunysha in the Cherry Orchard and Helen of Troy in Faust. TV has also brought her back to us on prime time as Manda Best in EastEnders.

“I still consider myself an actress,” said Josie. “One of my biggest heroines was Glenda Jackson. I adored her and thought her an incredible actress. I was so sad when she became an MP and we would never see her act again.”

But even here there is a comedic twist. Josie loves cats and revealed that the names of two favourites are Eric Morecambe Lawrence and Glenda Jackson Celia Lawrence (the cat was a rescue from the Celia Hammond sanctuary).

“Glenda Jackson had been kept in a cage for eight months since birth. So when I let her out in the garden she suddenly leapt around and shot up the tallest tree. I quickly climbed a neighbour’s shed and was on top of it shouting ‘Glenda Jackson, come down, come down here now’.

Josie has decided that it was at that point that her neighbours labelled her as the crazy, mad actress who lived on the street.

But goodness knows what they thought her actress friend, Glenda Jackson was doing up a tree!

Also, not to be missed, James Naughtie, of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book Club’ and ‘Today’ programme fame, is in conversation at the Steyning Centre – 3pm 24 May at the Festival, to launch his first political thriller novel: ‘The Madness of July’. Tickets £10 (with £5 towards book purchase).

Steyning Festival May 24 to June 8.

Tickets and Programme of events info from www.steyningfestival.co.uk or Steyning Bookshop 01903 812062.

The Comedy Store Players’ ‘A Serious Night Out’, including Josie Lawrence, Neil Mullarkey and Richard Vranch, at the Steyning Grammar School Drama Hall, Shooting Field, Steyning.

8pm. Doors and bar open at 7.15pm. Tickets cost £17.