Josie Long - Career

Career

After graduating from the University of Oxford, Long returned to live stand-up, supporting Stewart Lee on his spring 2005 tour.

She contributed sketches and one-liners to BBC Radio One's 2004/05 comedy show, The Milk Run with Andrew O'Neill. One edition of the show was entirely given over to a script she co-wrote with her friend Dan Harkin, entitled The Adventures Of Marco Polo.

In 2005 she began publishing a fanzine, Drawing Moustaches In Magazines Monthly Magazine (Bi-Monthly), which is distributed for free, and has featured contributions from Robin Ince, Kevin Eldon and Stewart Lee, as well as Danielle Ward and Isy Suttie.

She appeared in the show An Audience With Dan Nightingale & Josie Long with Mancunian comic Dan Nightingale, at the Café Royal, at the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe. In 2006 she won the If.comeddies Best Newcomer award at the Fringe for her show Kindness and Exuberance. In her 2007/2008 tour Trying is Good her act often involved drawing a sea scene on her arms and stomach. Long has a love of applique and the V&A Museum, and live Boggle contests sometimes form a part of her performances.

She has performed five solo shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and performed five subsequent UK tours in springs 2007, 2008 and 2009, Autumn 2010 and spring 2012. She has appeared at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (2007–10), the Adelaide Fringe Festival (2008), the New Zealand Comedy Festival (2008, 2010) and the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival (2008). Her show, Trying is Good was nominated for the Barry Award in Melbourne 2008. In 2009 she toured her show All of the Planet's Wonders, playing 14 dates during February and March. Her radio series Josie Long: All of the Planet's Wonders was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in early 2009. Her 2010 and 2011 shows, "Be Honourable" and "The future is another place" were both nominated for the Edinburgh comedy award for Best Show.

Along with fellow comics Hils Barker, Steve Hall and James Sherwood, she founded the All-Singing, All-Dancing Competitive News Bonanza, a live topical panel show that ran at the Red Lion pub in Soho in 2004/05, and at the Arts Theatre Club in Soho in 2006. In 2006 she also launched her own monthly comedy clubs, the Sunday Night Adventure Club, at the ABC Café in Crystal Palace, London (later at the Black Sheep pub) and The OK Club at the Boogaloo pub in Highgate, North London. She currently runs and hosts "The Lost Treasures of the Black Heart" comedy club in camden town, which is podcasted.

Long has written for the Channel Four teen comedy-drama series Skins. She has also appeared in an online webisode and episodes five and ten of the second series of the show, in which she plays a college careers adviser, and appeared again in episode 5 of the third series, reprising that role, this time, however, in another career. She makes a return appearance in series 6 as the college guidance counselor in episode 1.

She has also been involved in BBC Switch, on a weekly mini-feature called Josie Long's Confuse the Teacher Feature, where a word is read out by Long for young people listening to the show to include in their homework, which was formed after her suggestion of the idea during an interview on the show with Annie Mac.

She also appeared regularly in Robin Ince's podcast Show & Tell, now called Robin and Josie's Utter Shambles, co-hosted the Resonance FM show I, DJ with Danielle Ward and Isy Suttie, and guested on Answer Me This! podcast. She has also DJed at the London indiepop club night Scared To Dance. She appeared on the Jon Richardson Show on 27 July 2008 and again on 15 February 2009. On 9 October 2008 she appeared on Never Mind the Buzzcocks in the second programme of the 22nd series. On 19 January 2009 she appeared on the radio panel game Just a Minute. She appeared in hit Australian improvised-comedy show Thank God You're Here twice, the first of which aired on 6 May 2009. On 5 July 2009 she appeared on Sunday Night Show on Absolute Radio with Iain Lee. On 14 July and 28 July 2009 she appeared on Charlie Brooker's Channel 4 show You Have Been Watching.

On 21 August and 23 August 2009 Long performed at the Green Man Festival. On 15 November 2009, Long was the guest on the Dave Gorman radio show on Absolute Radio and the subsequent podcast of the show, before making her second appearance with Iain Lee, this time on Iain Lee's 2 Hour Long Late Night Radio Show, on the same station eight days later. She occasionally writes for Alan Moore's underground magazine Dodgem Logic.

On 15 January 2010 she was a contestant on Channel 4's "irreverent, and often irrelevant, panel show" 8 Out of 10 Cats. On 18 March 2010 she appeared on the BBC Two comedy quiz TV programme show The Bubble, during which she notably wore a garment displaying Nye Bevan related witticisms. She wrote and performed three short plays as part of BBC Radio 4's Afternoon Play series, including one about apostrophes.

Since 2010, Long has been involved with the anti-tax avoidance actvist group UK Uncut, and has on occasion promoted the group through her standup.

Long presented a Saturday morning radio show with Andrew Collins on BBC 6 Music and runs a monthly comedy club at The Black Heart in Camden Town, recordings of which are used for her new podcast The Lost Treasures of the Black Heart.