My Favourite Holiday: Jo Griffin
Ahead of her new work-in-progress show at the Fringe, comedian Jo Griffin casts her mind back to a time of Spain, Sisqó and stilettos
Magaluf. 2005. My first girls’ holiday. A dream trip for any anxious teenager who’s a fan of boy racers and dressing like Christina Aguilera in ‘Dirrty’ while waiting for your A-level results. It was a confusing rite of passage for me. I’d spend the days sunbathing, reading feminist texts such as Virgina Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own on a lilo, but by the evening it was club nights, necking fishbowl cocktails, and hoping to get off with a boy who looked like a jacket potato squashed into a Ben Sherman shirt. I couldn’t believe those suffragettes died for my right to wear this Jane Norman halterneck top and to body ripple (quite badly) to Sisqó’s ‘Thong Song’.
But I gained life skills on that holiday to rival Bear Grylls: the rock solid calf muscles developed from hobbling around in stilettos seven nights on the trot; the sheer focus and determination required to follow a group of guys up and down the bar strip for six hours (purely because they had eyebrow piercings); and finally the admirable, stoic patience shown as you held your friend’s clutch bag while she snogged a lad who looked a bit like Jay from 5ive if you squinted hard enough. And to those whose teenage summer holidays were more a trip to daddy’s vineyard in Tuscany to the soundtrack of Classic FM: well, you missed out, because that string quartet at the beginning of ‘Thong Song’ puts Mozart and his mates to shame.
Jo Griffin: Renegade, Underbelly George Square, Edinburgh, Thursday 20–Saturday 29 August.