COMEDY DATABASE

Comedy career

During the summer of 2008, Barnes lost her father, who was her comedy influence and had always encouraged her to do it. A year after his death, she decided that life was too short not to. She did a 12-week workshop in Brighton and a few months later started her stage career, 18 months later she won the competition.

 

Since winning the BBC Radio 2's New Comedy Award 2011, Barnes has continued to be a regular on the stand-up circuit, playing even bigger venues. She has also appeared on Weekend Wogan’s Children in Need Special and Russell Kane’s Whistlestop Tour for Radio 2, written for Radio 4’s The News Quiz, played on Eddie Izzard’s Laughs in the Park on BBC Two, appeared on Russell Howard's Good News on BBC Three, developed her own series with BBC Radio Comedy, and performed at the Latitude Festival, theEdinburgh Festival Fringe and Radio 2 Live in Hyde Park.

 

In June 2013, Barnes became noted for an article in The Guardian that followed a blog post she had written, where she spoke about how she felt society treated people deemedugly and her feelings as someone who self-identified as such.

In November 2013, Barnes joined the cast of the topical show Stand Up for the Week and, in February 2014, appeared on Radio 4's The Now Show.