I’m the worst at updating this page. Lotsa stuff happening including the Drunk Women Solving Crime podcast heading to Edinburgh Fringe 2019! Book here: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/drunk-women-solving-crime

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@taylorglenncomedy
I’m the worst at updating this page. Lotsa stuff happening including the Drunk Women Solving Crime podcast heading to Edinburgh Fringe 2019! Book here: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/drunk-women-solving-crime
Comedy Paradise Presents: Brett Goldstein + Archie Maddocks
I’ve launched a new comedy night called Comedy Paradise at the lovely Paradise by way of Kensal Green. Our first show was sold out and the next is Wednesday Oct 3rd featuring the fantastic Brett Goldstein (writer and star of Superbob, The Catherine Tate Show, Drunk History) + 2x Comedy Store Gong winner Archie Maddocks. Book here: https://www.designmynight.com/london/pubs/queens-park/paradise-by-way-of-kensal-green/comedy-paradise-presents-brett-goldstein-and-archie-maddocks?t=tickets
Drunk Women Solving Crime podcast
My new true crime comedy podcast DRUNK WOMEN SOLVING CRIME launched a few weeks ago, reaching #4 on the iTunes comedy charts and features talented guests like Katherine Ryan, London Hughes, and Felicity Montagu.
We're now on New and Noteworthy and Ep 6 drops tomorrow with some very exciting news . .Listen here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/drunk-women-solving-crime/id1425174819?mt=2
Taylor Glenn: A Billion Days of Parenthood
Stand up show #ABillionDaysofParenthood is back from a lovely run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival!
It will be in London at Soho’s Live at Zedel on Oct 26th: https://www.brasseriezedel.com/live-at-zedel/taylor-glenn
And in Philadelphia on Oct 16th at the Playground at the Adrienne Theater: https://taylorglenn.ticketleap.com/philadelphia/
More UK and USA dates coming soon!
"Frequently hilarious, consistently on the nose" ★★★★Fest Magazine
"It's funny, it's dark, it's sad. Everyone in the room loved it and you will too!" ★★★★★ Arts Award Voice
"Funny, perceptive, smartly observed" ★★★★ Three Weeks
"Turns any aspect of parenthood into laugh out loud comedy - clever stuff. She's like the Joan Rivers de nos jours"
★★★★ Bath Chronicle
A Billion Days of Parenthood picks up a 4 star review
Normally I don’t “believe” in reviews but if they’re good, fuck it.
http://theatrebath.co.uk/blog/review-4-stars-taylor-glenn-a-billion-days-of-parenthood-ring-obells/
2016 London show dates for #aBillionDaysofParenthood added!
Jan/Feb: Canal Cafe Theatre:
http://www.canalcafetheatre.com/EventPage.php?EventId=45107
Feb 12: Hen and Chickens Theatre
https://www.unrestrictedview.co.uk/taylor-glenn-a-billion-days-of-parenthood-work-in-progress/
Feb 25: Museum of Comedy
http://museumofcomedy.ticketsolve.com/shows/873544460/events
Taylor has started writing for Standard Issue Magazine: http://standardissuemagazine.com/author/tglenn/
New Guardian Blog about having an only child: http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2015/oct/27/just-the-one-the-misconceptions-of-the-only-child
New Guardian Blog about the psychology of victim-blaming: http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2015/sep/10/from-refugees-to-victims-tackling-victim-blaming
New Guardian blog about how giving affection to your children turns them into monsters. Satire contained within. http://gu.com/p/4bpng/stw
You’ve come a long way, Betty Crocker!
They say Tilda Swinton is the female chameleon, but look how much our national - nay, world - baking treasure has morphed over the years! Her crimson blazer has gone through more changes than you can shake a box of colour safe bleach at, and bygod, how her brunette mid length hair shines in its many different styles of mid lengthery. You wouldn’t want a long-haired Betty getting her nasty hair in your Fudgy Brownies. Not even in the swinging 60s, when women started burning their cupcakes.
And even though she spends all her time baking (powder, eggs, oil, REPEAT THIS LABOUR OF LOVE) she’s managed to get younger. That frumpy old grey haired prune in ‘36 can’t hold a birthday cake candle to the sassy, modern 96er who likes the Lemonheads and smudged eyeliner.
She does seem to have taken a sudden several-centuries-backwards jump in 1986 in order to dress like the American forefathers, but the 80s were a confusing time for economics and baking. Also, in 1955 she thought she was Liz Taylor and she wasn’t fooling anybody.
I don’t know what happened to Betty after 1996, but since I graduated high school that year, really, it doesn’t matter. Everything sort of stopped since those were the best years of my life. I like to think they were hers, too.
BTW Betty in the UK is a little bit more abstract, and she has something in her eye (maybe frosting?):
But I agree: Love Betty. We do, Betty. We do. Keep baking.
Less Thinking, More Drinking
Published in The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/jun/04/drinking-thinking-parenting-old-fashioned
I’ve just survived my first year of motherhood. And I love it, it’s the best thing ever, life has so much more meaning, etc. But let’s get to the harder stuff: nothing could have prepared me for the relentlessness of being so needed, for the immeasurable weight of being so crucial to the very survival of a helpless human being. Sleepless nights, hectic days, and this weird stickiness that just ends up on everything.
Despite being madly in love with my baby daughter, sometimes I couldn’t help but feel like a hostage. When other parents say “I can’t remember life without ‘em!” I think they must have concussion. Really? You can’t remember carefree nights out and actually needing an alarm to get up in the morning? Freely using the toilet because you haven’t got a sleeping infant slung across your body? Not smelling of vomit? In my darkest moments it felt the only difference between motherhood and Stockholm Syndrome was the size of the captor.
Scientists are still uncertain why some women suffer from postnatal depressionbut others don’t. As a former psychotherapist I’d worked with women with the illness, but in the throes of new motherhood I found myself befuddled by the diagnostic criteria. Especially at 3am, when I’d torture myself by repeatedly reading the symptoms: crying spells (cue sobbing), insomnia (I’m awake RIGHT NOW!), depressed mood (well yes, now you mention it), fatigue (you effing kidding me?), anxiety (ibid), and poor concentration (I just re-read that six times!?). Are there any new mothers not feeling those things? I felt both alone and in the secret company of millions.
A year under my (now larger) belt, and I’m finally getting a grip. But a question keeps irking me: how the hell did my mother do this three times? My grandmother, four? My aunt, six? Were they masochists? Or just made of tougher stuff than I? When I finally asked her, my mother’s response was: “we just didn’t think about stuff as much. Also we did whatever the doctor said.”
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It made me realise the source of my stress wasn’t the job of parenting, per se. It was the immense fear that I was going to apocalyptically mess it up. Alas, little comfort in simply identifying the problem, because studies show that a parent’s ability to manage stress is the second greatest predictor of a child’s well-being, just behind love and affection. So hey, don’t stress.
As for medical advice, officially our GP is a greying man who’s worked at the same surgery since 1897. But off the record? It’s the mercurial Dr Google. (Less doctor, more engine). A 24-hour service offering instant, free, and wholly conflicting advice, along with disturbing photos. It’s Dr Google who guided me in those early months, who told me just how worried I should be about leaving the baby to cry, about cautiously responding to a fever, and whether that wine I dared to sip with dinner would would leak into my breastmilk and make my child a violent psychopath later in life. It’s amazing how much time you have on your hands to research when you have no time left for yourself.
I’m usually the first to eschew suggestions of reverting to “the old ways” because too many people who pine for the good ole’ days are a mint julep away from a racist remark and/or a jolly slap on a waitress’s bottom. But learning that so many other modern parents feel similar anxiety, I can’t help but think there’s a case for some retro solutions. Let’s call it the three steps to throwback parenting:
1. Less Thinkin’, More Drinkin’
I’m not really advocating that what modern parents need is more alcohol. Yeah, no, but maybe some of us do. One of my fondest memories is my grandmother giving me the gin-soaked olives from her martinis. Mmm, the briney taste of childhood! I now realise she was drinking in the middle of the day. While she waslooking after me. The neurotic modern parent cries shame on you, Grandma! The throwback parent says well done giving yourself (and me) a little treat. Compared to early days where I haven’t even had a sip of water because THE BABY NEEDS ME, and well, there’s something to be said for balance. I’m not minimising the very real effects of alcohol abuse in families. But you know what Grandma wasn’t worrying about while she mixed a cocktail? Gina Ford v Dr Sears. Cheers.
2. A Bit of Dirt Don’t Hurt
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I’ve never been afraid of germs, but having a newborn suddenly made everything feel like a giant petri dish. I remember strolling through the park and watching horrified as a grimy toddler hovered over my precious infant and coughed. I grumbled “hi there” but in my head gave him a swift sidekick across the park, because he was giving my daughter tuberculosis. My mother was also surprised to learn that we bathe the baby so much. “It’s her routine!” I cried. Yet it’s been established that raising baby in too clean an environment robs her of the chance to develop crucial immunity. I already hate cleaning, so this is welcome guidance. Besides, chasing after my tired, waterlogged pre-toddler every night after her bath, wrangling her into a SIDS-reducing sleeping bag and then steaming the floors isn’t nearly as fun as just letting her chew on the toilet roll. Good unclean fun.
3. The Internet Doesn’t Exist
It’s impossible not to look back over my year and imagine doing it all again without being so hard on myself. Some of that is just my nature, some of it is perhaps grounded in a real pressure on modern parents, especially women, to do things perfectly. But what if I had resisted the urge to trawl the internet for studies on all the ways my baby’s skull could fuse incorrectly? (I confess I actually woke my husband up to show him an aerial photo I’d taken of the baby’s head). I suppose that’s one reason people double down and have a second child: the chance to do it again without the neurosis.
I also wonder if whomever coined the term “helicopter parent” wasn’t just an observer, but like me, caught themself drowning in every parenting guide printed since the industrial revolution before realising the real pitfall for the well-meaning, caring parent is hovering. My mother assumed everything would work out OK, and just got on with it, whereas I find myself constantly trying to avoid the worst imagined outcome.
Would previous generations have been as trusting if they’d had the internet? Who knows. What I do know is that if we are driven by a fear of failure, and by fear, period, we risk denying kids the chance to learn how to cope themselves. And here I used to make fun of parents like me. Ah, karma.
So, as I gear up for the second year, I am determined to relax more. To enjoy the ride. To trust that the outcome will be fine if I stop trying to anticipate every possible way I could mess it up. I think I’m getting there. Also I hear toddlers are super easy.
Taylor Glenn is an American comedian, writer and former psychotherapist based in London. She sometimes tweets stuff via @taylorglennUK
Top Ten Fears of Impending Motherhood
1. You’ll never work in this town again.
There’s no maternity leave in comedy. Well, there is, but the fear is it could be indefinite, and it’s most certainly unpaid. The majority of industry people have been great, but I have had the occasional “Oh, you’re pregnant? OK bye, loser!” moments. Not to mention screwing up my last spot at The Comedy Store because I was in the barfing phase of the first trimester, but couldn’t yet reveal the news. I’m just proud I didn’t spray the owner’s polyester shirt with vom during “feedback time.” Or maybe I wish I had.
Also I’ve had to say no to gigs which feel “too far away” because I don’t really want my waters to break in Penzance. BTW, why is it “waters” in the UK and just “water” in the US? I suppose it sounds more nautical, which IS delightful. I thought it was enough I’ve started saying “maths” but now, “waters?” And when I sing the alphabet song to this kid, I have to end with ZED. It doesn’t rhyme, it just doesn’t rhyme at all. It’s a jolting end to a song. But that’s what I have to say. I’m already anxious about that and the effect it will have on both of us.
But the real fear isn’t how the “industry” will treat me, let’s face it: it’s that I won’t have enough brain cells left to create anything more than banana bread, and just enough motivation to go to baby swim class on Tuesdays. Also, I need a good joke in case my breasts leak while I’m on stage.
2. Being awake for BBC Breakfast every day.
Still being up for the 6 AM breakfast show used to be a unique event which showed I had either a. returned really, really late from an away gig and hadn’t gone to bed yet, or b. was buzzed from writing late into the night and couldn’t sleep or c. had stayed up “partying.” Note: c. was becoming very rare as of late, I’m actually ashamed to even include it, but you know, rule of threes. But I have always been able to make up for sleep in my life. I remember a new mother telling me that the sleep deprivation was like wartime torture. Which is already how I feel about some of the segments on BBC Breakfast. At least I’m used to being in pajamas for most of the day.
3. I’ve made something which is actually going to eat more often than I do.
I stopped buying basil plants a long time ago because I just couldn’t get the watering responsibilities nailed down and they would all wither and die. Babies eat all day, and I hope because the food is coming from my boobs and because they’ve got an inbuilt signalling mechanism it’ll be OK (if my basil had learned to scream it would may survived long enough to adorn a few more pizzas). But the fear that I’ll fail at the first hurdle and the baby will turn into a human raisin in the first few weeks is stark.
4. Nuclear war, and other stuff.
Not even South Korea is all that phased by the threat of nuclear war from their adorably stroppy northern neighbours. I used to pride myself in having a general lack of fear about the big threats in life, like nuclear war and flying with Ryanair. Suddenly it’s not just me anymore so it’s hard to say “meh, so I’ll die.” The realisation that I’m not only responsible for bringing this child up, but also for bringing them into an imperfect world is about as comforting as the thought of leaving it with Kim Jong-un for a playdate. I bet he keeps to good strict schedules though.
5. If my bump gets any bigger I’m going to split in half.
Accepting the physical alterations of pregnancy is both delightful (internal kicks and punches!) and confronting (Oh, the hair on your stomach grows like a Manpeach? Righteous.) Yeah, I said Manpeach.
6. Childbirth is going to split me in half.
When you start Googling “cases where woman didn’t tear pushing out baby” this fear comes to life.
7. People are dicks.
Being pregnant brings both the appreciation of the tender and poignant aspects of life (sunshine, puppies, repeat Facebook posts about the autistic kid who played high school basketball really well when they finally let him) and the ugly realisation that there are lots of dicks around. The thought that this little creature I’ve co-created will someday be taunted by someone, rejected in all the ways life rejects you, made to feel humiliated – it’s enough to make me want to move to Alaska and home school. But then that’s in range of North Korea’s missiles AND the Palins and I’d rather the kid get bullied really.
8. I’ll never get through another uninterrupted episode of Game of Thrones.
You know when you try to have a conversation with a new mother and it’s like chatting to a talking doll which is programmed to say “oh, really?” and “wow!” at regular but nonsensical intervals? That’s because babies demand every ounce of attention you’ve got. But you can’t just OH REALLY and WOW at Game of Thrones. You just can’t. I don’t want to talk about it any more.
9. I’m going to become THAT mother.
The scary thing is, maybe “that mother” never set out to be that kind of mother, either. The kind who saves nail clippings, takes 8 hour Andy Warhol style videos of the baby sleeping on their iPad and uploads to YouTube, and dresses her kid in Gucci. And lectures everyone about mercury levels in tuna on the bus. And starts to find Family Guy “really offensive.”
10. I’ll give birth to the Bad Seed.
Truth is, even as I write these things down and make light of them, I know I’ve got this. I’m ready. I want this more than I’ve wanted anything in my life. I’ve got a lot of love to give and I’m sure that levels of patience I never knew I had will follow. I already love the little octopus who squirms in my belly all day, and I can work a nappy like a champ. Yeah, I say nappy now. I have to. But my point is, this will be good and I know it. I actually can’t wait.
But then…what if I attend to the nurture side like a champ, but the DNA combines in some sort of freak show manner (as may happen when Americans breed with the Welsh?) and I end up with Rosemary’s Baby? No one wants to play with Rosemary’s Baby, it’s all evil and stuff. And you don’t want a kid who’s limited to plastic sporks for the rest of its life.
Ah well. If that happens – I’ll have enough material for a great Edinburgh show in 2014 (if trouble getting a sitter) and fear number one will be eliminated. And they show Cheers at 6 AM too, so I’ve got viewing options. I can catch up on any pending seasons of Game of Thrones when the child is older and make sure they get into it too (five is about old enough, right?). I’ll teach the child to use witty comebacks to people who are dicks, like “at least I’m not a dick, DICK.” And I won’t be “that mother” because I can’t afford and don’t like Gucci clothes and nail clippings gross me out even if they’re really little.
I haven’t worked out what to do if I split in half giving birth but I trust the NHS will have some ideas.
Yeah, I’ve got this.
Strap yourselves in: this lady takes you on a comedy rollercoaster” Lee Sigerson, The Glee Club