Mel McGlensey on new show MOTORBOAT: ‘My boobs are the central focus of the show’
Comedian Mel McGlensey talks to us about changing direction and navigating her course in comedy
Mel McGlensey is the proud possessor of many slashes: starting off as a headline writer, she moved into journalism before making the jump to improvised comedy (you can catch her in Completely Improvised Shakespeare this Fringe too). Her solo political satire show The Briefing debuted in 2023, and she’s also found time to helm an award-winning short film. But on her way to the Edinburgh Fringe last year, she spent time at world-renowned clown school École Philippe Gaulier and something shifted.
‘I was spit-balling in the living room with some clowns and we came up with this bit that I coined MOTORBOAT. I brought it to Edinburgh, did a few line-ups and guest spots, and it went so well that I thought, “you know what, there’s a full hour in this”,’ says McGlensey. ‘I essentially went from serious political satire to silly sexy clown shit in a very short period.’ Close perusal of almost any major comedy festival programme suggests clown-based comedy is on the rise, but why is that? ‘It’s the future of comedy. Comedy, like everything, follows trends and patterns; everything is a reaction to the thing that came before. Political satire has been unpopular for a while, right? Because it’s so tied to real life and people are looking for the surreal, the strange, the bizarre. Clown embodies that.’
On a personal level, McGlensey sees clowning as a natural progression. ‘I started off in improv and I’m always chasing that next high; clown is as extreme as it gets in comedy. Very often, I’m a talking head, my comedy is cerebral and I spit out jokes, but that loses its delight. I felt like I was making comedy with only one of my tools and ignoring this other tool, which is my entire body. But then, as a woman on stage, there’s a reason why I’ve been ignoring everything from the neck down. I thought I had to exist in a certain way to be taken seriously.’
So what’s MOTORBOAT about? ‘My boobs are the central focus of the show. It started when I was talking to a friend about weird body talents (everyone has one) and mine is that I can motorboat myself.’ McGlensey says it felt ‘so funny and almost reductive’ that embracing her physicality meant embracing who she was on the inside. ‘So maybe I will jiggle around, and maybe that’s funny, and maybe that’s OK. It’s just a show about a little motorboat: part woman, part boat, part clown and she goes on a journey to restart her motor and exist without Captain Daddy. It’s very silly. And a little bit sexy. The boobs are the stars of the show. I’m just around.’