AL Kennedy does stand-up

Those with political interests may know AL (Alison) Kennedy as a talented black commentator on the war, both on rally platforms and in her sometimes terrifying Guardian columns over the past few years. She's also been crucial in the inflorescence (?sp) of modern Scottish literature over recent years, in another of her plural careers. Empirically, this makes her already a flexible polymath (although she would shun such a description), yet she's extending her expressive range yet further recently by venturing into stand-up comedy.

ALK performed twice last week at a local comedy club, and R and I saw the second of these on a female comedians' night, 'SisStars'. Given the theme and the setting (in the gay capital of Scotland), there was a reassuring representation of dykes in the audience. Compere Susan Morrison (who's fucking brilliant, in Weedgie style) had the audience well warmed up with her crackling staccato post-feminist diatribe before ALK came on for her short set. Susan, after picking me to charmingly victimise (for the second time in 6 months), commented that to pry ALK out of her house is not an easy feat. Maybe because it was a wimmen's night, ALK concentrated on a female leitmotif- the (Pap) smear test, which most of us undergo every 3 years at least. Having introduced the theme that as a writer she is continually bored by strangers with ideas for books, she related the story about being 'pitched' with a book idea by a practice nurse while undergoing a smear, and with speculum in place. We liked it.