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A few months ago, comedians Amy Gledhill and Harriet Kemsley went speed dating. Tentatively hopeful and giddily anxious, they settled their nerves with a drink before arriving at the venue, a trendy south-east London pizzeria. In the event, any excitement was unwarranted: Kemsley “dissociated” and went quiet, while Gledhill found herself in “corporate team-building mode”, using humour to grease the wheels of other people’s dates while disengaging on a personal level. The men weren’t perfect, either: one avoided all eye contact; another recognised Gledhill – who has become a familiar face since winning last year’s Edinburgh fringe prize – and started doing her own material at her. There was a promising development, though: one attender slid into Gledhill’s DMs later that evening – and she replied.
How do I know all this? Because since October, Kemsley and Gledhill have been routinely spilling the beans about their love lives on their candid and hugely endearing podcast Single Ladies in Your Area. The show sees the 37-year-olds grapple with modern dating, a premise that requires them to share their hopes, fears and deepest vulnerabilities. “We divulge too much,” says Kemsley, sitting in the offices of the podcast’s production company, fresh from another heart-on-sleeve recording. “And then we listen to it and go: ‘That’s fine, put it out!’” laughs Gledhill beside her.
The pair came up with the concept at a comedy industry event: they had coincidentally both decided to reveal they were newly single during their respective standup sets. The audience was made up of peers and friends, many of whom didn’t yet know Gledhill had separated from her partner, nor that Kemsley had split from her husband and the father of her daughter, Canadian comic Bobby Mair. When the latter mentioned it, “there was a gasp. It’s horrible when you’re doing live comedy and people are whispering: is this true?! I felt really embarrassed.” Backstage, the pair joked that they should do a podcast on the subject – a joke that quickly morphed into a solid plan.
The charm of Single Ladies in Your Area is rooted in Kemsley and Gledhill’s personalities: unjaded yet meticulously self-effacing; it’s impossible not to become overly invested in the ridiculously likable duo’s romantic (mis)fortunes. From the start, they knew their USP would be relatability – the opposite of “confident, empowered” influencers and their TikTok dating hacks. A recurring theme is their struggle to master the apps: on a recently recorded episode, comedian Stephen Bailey ripped their profiles “to shreds”, says Gledhill. “One of my pictures was actually in a graveyard, and he was like: ‘Get rid of that.’” Kemsley “had put that I like sloths in mine. He said: ‘That’s not how you’re going to meet your person.’” Sharing the content of their profiles on the show has been “so humiliating”, she continues. “You’re selling yourself and it’s such a weird, unnatural thing to do.”
The dating landscape may be new to them, but Gledhill and Kemsley are seasoned pros when it comes to mining laughs from love. Gledhill’s latest show, Make Me Look Fit on the Poster, revisits the gobsmacking low points of various past relationships, while Kemsley’s current tour – Everything Always Works Out for Me – focuses on the aftermath of her divorce. It comes after a long period spent collaborating with Mair: in 2017, the couple made a “reality sitcom” about their nuptials for Vice; the following year they appeared on Roast Battle, throwing eye-watering insults at each other in the name of comedy (sample Kemsley line: “Some people say men marry their mother, but I don’t think that’s true because I’m not a dead prostitute”). She describes their work/life crossover as “volatile, but we know each other’s voices so well and you trust each other in those situations”. That said, “I think maybe I wouldn’t do a roast battle with my next husband.”
Gledhill and Kemsley’s shared choice of career has also complicated their romantic prospects. For men, comedy is a surefire way to get girls; for women, it’s “the opposite”, says Gledhill. “There’s a huge chunk of men that don’t want a funny, outspoken partner.” Standup usually revolves round a performer riffing on their failures and flaws, something Gledhill thinks is very appealing to women because they “love a project. Women love to fix men. Whereas men go: ‘Oh, fuck that.’” “Yeah, but we’re not doing that any more!” interjects Kemsley. “We’re learning from the podcast that we don’t want to be fixer-uppers,” Gledhill confirms.
Bar a few exceptions, the podcast’s guests tend to be the pair’s female comedian pals (Sophie Willan, Chloe Petts, Felicity Ward). It’s reflective of the new standup sisterhood: previously, the unofficial one-woman-per-show rule meant female comics rarely crossed paths, says Kemsley, but the gradual diversification of lineups over the past decade has given them the chance to bond. Nowadays, the scene is “so supportive”, says Gledhill. “There’s some really good friendship groups of just funny, funny women. And we have a fucking great time.”
Solidarity is important in an industry that normalises a lack of personal safety. Some men “really like to be close to female comedians in an unhealthy creepy way”, says Gledhill. There are practical issues, too. In order to afford to attend the Edinburgh fringe one year, Gledhill slept in a cupboard in a flat occupied by 20 strangers. “I didn’t feel scared because I was young. I’d be fucking terrified now.”
While it has always been difficult to make ends meet when performing in Edinburgh – Gledhill once trained as a masseuse and gave massages to festivalgoers so she could pay her bills – rocketing prices have made it harder than ever. “It feels so unfair because you have to spend about £10,000. If it carries on like this, it’ll just be privileged kids. And working-class kids are funny!”
On a personal level, Gledhill no longer has such concerns – in fact, she’s the reigning queen of the fringe. Despite having already been nominated twice as half of comedy double act the Delightful Sausage, she was utterly flabbergasted at being awarded the main comedy prize last year. “When Richard Osman gives me the award I’m in such shock that I’m grimacing,” she says, hauntedly recalling the footage of the ceremony. “I look like I’ve just seen a horrific car accident.”
Kemsley has had some characteristically chaotic Edinburgh experiences; her first fringe involved “accidentally doing a Christian message play. I found out because everyone joined hands and started praying backstage”. At that point the Kent native was attempting to become a “serious” actor “but people kept laughing”. Then her parents advised her to try standup: “They were like mad things always happen to you and you always have funny stories.” She took to it immediately. “I’d always been a bit shy, but doing standup I could say what I thought and people liked it.” Well, not always. The first out-there anecdote she deployed was about “the time I accidentally killed an owl, which sometimes would be too dark”.
Gledhill’s career was sparked by her university boyfriend. “He was an open-mic comedian and he was terrible. And I’d watch him and go: ‘God, I could definitely do it at least as well as him.’” Both Gledhill – who had been a “creepy” classic sitcom obsessive as a child growing up in Hull – and Kemsley say they had never considered a career in standup as youngsters, partly due to the dearth of female comics in the 90s and 00s. “I rarely saw women doing it when I was growing up,” says Gledhill. “Only Jo Brand and maybe Jenny Eclair.”
Times have changed, though. Nowadays, comedy is a more conceivable – and aspirational – career for women. A case in point is that the wall behind the sofa is adorned with huge, glossy posters promoting the pair’s tour shows: Gledhill’s diva-like get-up – voluminous perm and feather-trimmed top – is undercut by Wotsit dust-caked lips; Kemsley, meanwhile, is glam as can be in pink satin, save for the small fire working its way up her long, blond tresses.
Despite their chronic self-deprecation and the apparently repellent nature of their profession, the posters have me wondering whether these two attractive, successful women will be on the market long enough to make the podcast a viable long-term prospect. “People were concerned about that, but it turns out we’re not in any trouble,” deadpans Kemsley.
If they do, the show has already proven to be a strangely valuable communication tool. When a recent squeeze of Gledhill started listening, the effect was “kind of cool, because you’re giving someone an instruction manual on how you need to be loved; he knew my love of languages, that I have no boundaries, he knew everything!”
The only problem was that it wasn’t “a two-way street. So I said to him: you need to do me a podcast!” If exchanging personalised audio content turns out to be the next dating innovation, you heard it here first.
