The Change star Bridget Christie: 'You've got to make a real effort to evolve when you get to 50'

Bridget Christie was born in Gloucester in 1971. She began stand-up in 2004 and was one of the finalists of the Funny Women Awards that year. Since then, she has written and performed 14 stand-up shows, including A Bic for Her, which won the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2013, as well as her own BBC Radio 4 series and 2014’s A Book for Her.

In 2023, the first series of her Channel 4 show The Change was broadcast, for which Christie was nominated for a BAFTA – the second series is currently on Channel 4. She has appeared in much-loved TV and radio shows including Have I Got News For You, QI, Harry Hill’s Alien Fun Capsule, The News Quiz, Dilemma and Taskmaster.

Speaking to Big Issue for her Letter to My Younger Self, Bridget Christie talks about her late start in comedy, parenthood and an increased sense of mortality.

I left school very young with not many qualifications. School didn’t suit me at all – I wasn’t academic and if you have a creative brain, I don’t think you’re supported enough. If you’re also poor and from a big, Irish working-class family it’s even more tough. I had a lot of hand-me-downs and was on free school meals and I remember being picked on quite a lot. I wasn’t a confident kid – I was a bit of a loner. I wanted to leave home, leave school and get a job. I needed to earn money – I’m the youngest of nine children, so there wasn’t going to be anyone bailing me out. I’d also lived with so many people my whole life. So I wanted to get on with my life and felt that school was holding me back.

I was a biker. I got a motorbike when I was 15. From then until I was 23, I was always going to rallies and festivals. I was into Hawkwind and Creedence Clearwater Revival, Lynyrd Skynrd and Led Zeppelin – and I loved The Clash from a young age.

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Comedy was always huge for me. I’d watch Laurel and Hardy films, Harold Lloyd, all the Ealing Comedies, Dad’s Army, Monty Python and the new alternative comedy like The Young Ones. But I also loved things like Tales of the Unexpected and The Singing Detective – all those dense, surprising shows. Television is different now. Creative writing was trusted more back then. 

I’d already worked in a factory but at 16 I got a job as editorial assistant at The Gloucester Citizen. I might have lied to get it. I think I put down loads of O levels but I only got one CSE in English and drama. I did amateur dramatics when I was a teenager, but my teachers said you won’t be an actor – get an office job. It never entered my mind to go to university. I had office jobs until I was 36. 

I wrote comedy sketches at school for the younger kids to perform. Everything was very absurd. But I never thought of writing as a career. I hoped I might be an actor, so I was focused on that. At 18, I auditioned for drama school and got a place but I didn’t get a grant. At that point, I needed a grant to be able to afford to go. I ended up going five years later.

From the age of 26 to 50, when I wrote the role of Linda in The Change for myself, I never got a single acting job from an audition. And I don’t think my acting could have been that bad. This is where contacts and networking would have helped. I loved comedy and acting but I was very naive. I thought that would be enough and it just wasn’t. People cast their friends and I just could not get that first acting job. Hundreds of auditions. Some bad, others where the casting director said, “I’d be surprised if you don’t get it”. But if I’d got those jobs, I wouldn’t have gone into stand-up comedy, I wouldn’t have thought about who I was, I wouldn’t have evolved my writing.

I’d been wanting to talk about feminism in my comedy for a while. In the 2010s, there was Caitlin Moran’s book, Laura Bates and the Everyday Sexism project. I took a show to Edinburgh and talked about feminism for a 10-minute section. It got really bad reviews – not for the comedy, for the subject matter. So I dug my heels in and returned with a whole hour – which won the Edinburgh Comedy Award. It made me think about how I could write about feminism in an absurd or funny way, which became a delicious puzzle I’m still obsessed by. The privilege of this job is that we have an outlet. Most people just absorb things like poor health, abuse, bullying and don’t have an outlet to talk about it. I’m so grateful for that.

I see women everywhere with all this potential. But if you’re from a certain background, forget about it. Linda in The Change represents so many people – she is not me, but she is a version of me if I was still doing those jobs and if nothing ever happened. All the folklore was in me from three years old – all the Catholic stuff, the praying, rituals, costumes and ceremony, but our parents would also take us to Stonehenge in this big old Bedford van. It instilled a sense of history in us – and the Irish are great at storytelling.

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I grew up around politics. My parents were staunch Labour voters, Irish immigrants who talked about going to Hyde Park in the 50s and 60s on rallies. My mum was really behind the miners in the 80s. So it was that kind of environment. Mum was with all of us kids all day and had jobs as well, so my dad would get back from the factory and wash out all the nappies in a bucket. I always remember him saying he was not going to come home and watch the woman he loved doing everything. It’s such a simple thing. It was nothing to do with feminism – my parents never would have thought like that – but what is equality? It’s respect for your fellow human. I think about that a lot. Because I know a lot of left-wing feminist men who do not think like that. It’s all theoretical. It’s all, ‘Yes, women should have the vote,’ but they’re very happy to have the carpet hoovered around their feet while they read their Marxist theory books. 

I don’t think I’ve retained my 100% true self in my relationships. I’ve had long-term relationships, short-term relationships and there’s a part of us that wants to appeal to somebody else, especially if you love them. But when you do that, you can sometimes forget about yourself. So I would say to my younger self what I say to my kids: don’t try to fit in too much, retain yourself.

There’s so much I’d like to tell my younger self. We’ll run out of time. I would tell her that the things you don’t like about yourself, maybe things you get bullied for, are the things that are going to make you. Because the most important thing you can do if you’re creative is work from the heart, communicate with people from the heart. You can only do that if you’re being you. Don’t hate yourself so much that you’re pretending to be a different person, because that won’t work.

The whole world changes when your kids are born, doesn’t it? So if I could relive one day, I’d need to relive the two days when my kids were born. Well, three, because one of them took more than 24 hours. Everything changed. Even the weather changed for me – this sounds mad, but I left Homerton Hospital with my babies, and was so aware of them being open to the elements. You will never be important again once you have kids.

I’m really aware of my mortality – I’ve accepted death and dying. Every moment is so precious, so really try and enjoy it. I only had that enlightenment during lockdown. I became super grateful for everything. I love life, and it’s passing. I’m really aware of that. So I try to talk to my kids openly about that and enjoy the simple things.

You’ve got to make a real effort to keep evolving when you get to 50. I don’t mean learning a new language or these bucket lists people have. But finding ways to be a better person. That’s what I’m focused on – it gets hard as you get older. Your brain’s not as malleable. But I’m less frightened of ageing physically than ageing mentally or becoming set in my ways, small-minded, grumpy and moody. That’s much more ageing. I’ve got teenage kids so I’m trying to be cool – not cool as in wearing sunglasses all the time, more cool as in not getting stuck.

If I could have one last conversation, I’d love to talk with my mum again. Just to tell her how much I loved her and how great she was. And what did she think about everything. I’d love to talk to her about my kids, because she died when I was 26, before I got married, before I had kids, before I had any success. But she did tell me in the days before she died to never, ever give up on that. She believed in me. And she is always with me – what a fantastic woman.

The Change series two starring Bridget Christie is on Channel 4 now.

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