Nicola Lisle chats to self-mocking comedian Rosie Wilby

Award-winning comedian Rosie Wilby is as much fun offstage as she is on it, and my chat with her is peppered with outbursts of laughter.

Most of the laughter is at herself — or, to be precise, at her younger, student self, and her very personal journey through feminism and other political issues in the early 1990s.

This is the basis of her latest show, Nineties Woman, in which she turns the spotlight on her sometimes idealistic adventures using live storytelling interspersed with video clips, songs and photos.

Her inspiration was the discovery of old copies of Matrix, the feminist newspaper she and a group of friends set up at York University in 1990, which led her to wonder what had become of the group.

“It’s a bit like creating a Nick Broomfield-esque documentary live on stage,” she explains. “We’ve got clips of me tracking down some of the women I was at university with, and I tell the story onstage and weave the clips together. We’ve got lots of funny photos as well, and it’s amazing how the 90s now seems really historical!

“Things have changed so much, because we didn’t have the Internet, and that’s completely revolutionised things in some fabulous ways, and some less good ways. There was a certain charm about the way we had to interact back them, and this feminist newspaper that we put together at the time had a really kind of DIY charm to it. So it’s an interesting show that brings together all different elements.”

Although the show touches on serious topics such as the Poll Tax riots, political lesbianism and Reclaim the Night rallies, there is a strong element of gentle self-mockery.

“We’ve rescued some really fab clips from our archive, and one of my favourite things was a video of me presenting on Yorkshire student television with a very dodgy perm! The credit sequence is really dated and quite cheesy but it’s really fun. “We did go to the Poll Tax riots on a coach from York, and there was quite a bit of trouble, but I remember that myself and some of the other women actually went off and had a nice civilised cup of tea in a rather Bohemian café!”

One review called the show “a hilarious adventure story”, but it does give viewers some food for thought too.

“The show makes a subtle, underlying commentary about the fact that feminism, certainly when I was a student, still seemed to have quite an energy about it. There was a hangover from feminism being quite vibrant in the 70s and 80s, but then it seemed to get very diluted in the 90s, and now of course it’s back. “But it’s very much a personal story about being a student, about thinking you can change things, and about trying to track down the woman that everybody had a crush on!”

Originally a singer-songwriter, who fronted her own band in the 1990s, Rosie fell into comedy quite by chance. After her band split up, she began doing solo acoustic gigs, but felt she needed to add something to pull the audiences in.

“I started telling stories and chatting a lot to the audience in between songs, and that really seemed to start getting a response. A few people started saying to me, ‘You should have a go at stand-up comedy’, which was in the back of my mind, but not really a major plan until comedy started becoming a bigger thing in 2004.”

Rosie was inspired by her university contemporary Zoe Lyons — now a successful comedian — to enter the Funny Women competition, and made it to the final. From there she started doing more solo gigs and devising stand-up shows, of which Nineties Woman is the latest.

With feminism at the heart of the show, it might seem that it has been written for a purely female audience, but Rosie insists that it has a wider appeal.

“It’s actually a very light show and it appeals to everyone. It’s not looking in a really serious way at feminism — it’s about a personal journey, about finding yourself.

“When I did it at the Manchester Women’s Comedy Festival in October, there were mostly women in the audience, but there was one guy who came up to me afterwards and he said, ‘I was so engrossed in the story I missed Match of the Day!’ “I just think that’s brilliant, because the point is actually Nineties Woman is a story about growing up. So there’s some of the foolish things that we do and say when we’re young and idealistic, and feminism was part of that journey for me, but it’s quite a universal thing.”

Rosie Wilby: Nineties Woman
Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford
Tomorrow, 7.30pm
Tickets: 01865 305305 or visit www.oxfordplayhouse.com