Bryony Kimmings interview: Let's talk about sex

Let's talk about sex... or chlamydia to be precise. From sexually transmitted diseases to the politics of pubic hair, nothing is off-limits for Bryony Kimmings, says Susannah Butter
Portrait of performer Bryony Kimmings at the Soho Theatre, central London.
Matt Writtle
18 October 2013

It takes a bold woman to collect the pubes of strangers and sellotape them to her face as a moustache, but Bryony Kimmings says it’s not the worst thing she has done. That’s a secret. The 32-year-old incorporated this unconventional facial hair into a phenomenally successful stand-up show. She wrote Sex Idiot after finding out she had chlamydia and deciding to interview everyone she’s ever slept with to identify the source.

“The pubes got attention but I was like hang on a minute, we’re all fucking each other without a condom in strangers’ houses and you’re worried about your clean, just-got-to-the-theatre middle-class pubes.” She procures the pubic hairs by passing a cup and scissors round the audience and asking for donations. Afterwards she announces she’s never washed that cup or scissors. “I wanted them to be careful next time someone asked them to act recklessly.” But she admits “it could be smelly. Last day of Bestival pubes were the worst”.

Kimmings did a reprise of Sex Idiot this month at The Other Club, a pop-up women’s club in Carnaby Street, where she drew the audience with her hilarious version of Subterranean Homesick Blues, which consists of synonyms for vagina (feat Fuckingham Palace), led them through her relationship history and then punched them in the stomach when it turned out that The Man in the Kaftan, who she thought was the one, was actually the one who gave her chlamydia. “I spoke to around 45 people when I didn’t need to — so it was a show about betrayal.” She is still in touch with Mr Kaftan. “I see my ex-boyfriends. You’ve shared great memories so it’d be a shame to lose them.”

We meet at the Soho Theatre, where she is performing Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model, with her niece Taylor, nine. They take on attempts to sexualise and commodify childhood for profit, inventing dinosaur-loving, bike riding alternative pop star Catherine Bennett. Rowan Atkinson, Juliette Lewis and Larry David have all been to see it.

“Susie Essman came after so I’m presuming Larry David told her. It’s getting high profile, which is funny because I still think it’s experimental. But if I can make people see performance art where I tell them dark shit and they change their mind about politics, that’s my dream.”

Sex Idiot made her realise art works when there’s a message. “I was 30 and had never been tested for STIs. I came out of a cloudy twenties and was in a relationship I was serious about so thought I should get a clean slate. They told me the results over the phone. The woman asked if I was sitting down and I thought that’s it, I’ve got HIV. That really shocked me.”

Deciding to find the culprit was “the nerdy thing to do”. “I also wanted to get people talking about sexual health. My friends and I had never spoken about chlamydia but when I brought it up in the pub it turned out we’d all had it. I’m not ashamed. You can get rid of it with one tablet but if you don’t cure it you can’t have children.”

What does she think about the rise of the withdrawal method and the bareback revolution that a popular newspaper recently claimed is taking place in Britain’s bedrooms? “Why did they put that in the paper? And they used the term DC — dick control — don’t call it that! Then they said it was 96 per cent effective, but sometimes 81 per cent — so they don’t know.”

Kimmings’s own sex education was “liberal”. “My mum was open. But I’m from a generation where chlamydia wasn’t a thing. I saw an advert about it with young people in so thought it’s a young person’s disease.”

Her confidence to stand up in front of crowds and share her sexual history comes from her family. “It was just my mum, two sisters and aunties when I was growing up on a council estate in Peterborough. My mum was powerful — she did everything. There was never a filter on what was spoken about. Someone would go, ‘I’ve come on my period and we’d go ‘me too!’”

Kimmings modestly says she’s the least witty one in her family, but the reviews for her latest show suggest she’s doing pretty well — putting paid to Princess Michael of Kent’s recent comment, “it’s not often that beautiful girls are also very funny — I mean, ugly girls have to be funny”.

When I tell her this she retorts. “It’s bullshit. Women are funnier because we suffer more. If you’re attractive you can really fuck with people’s minds. When a beautiful person suddenly gets a breast out and covers it in tomato sauce people are like what is happening?”

Now she lives in Clapton, “although I’ll probably get priced out soon”, and has a new boyfriend, Tim, who is “very cool, very feminist. He does believe men and women are equal”.

Her mission is to make popstar Bennett famous, and she is doing a one-off show for six- to 12-year-olds next Saturday. This new-found excitement about children came after an arts company suggested she run some workshops in schools.

“I was in east London going out every night and doing a filthy show, so thought it was a mental idea but I realised kids are fascinating. Their brains are weird.”

She “desperately” would like her own. “I can’t wait for the little freaks to come out. I was terrified because I thought the world was a shit place for them but I’m more positive now. I want them to rule the world.”

Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model is on at the Soho Theatre until 26 October and the children’s Catherine Bennett show is on 26 October.

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