Originally not aired on ??/??/????

It’s finally over!

 

After months of build-up, overly-sentimental John Lewis adverts, and intense family conflict, Halloween is done. It’s now Halloween Boxing Day and we’re in that weird period in-between Halloween and Bonfire night where no one really knows what day it is. But before you make a bunch of resolutions and join a gym, how about you sit back, get out the cheap leftover chocolate that trick-or-treaters refused to accept, and enjoy the season finale of my podcast.

 

And who better to join me for today’s finale than country-girl Katy Trev?

 

A bigger and more successful comedian, you say? Maybe. But what Katy lacks in accomplishments she more than makes up for in crossbows, owning three of them.

 

“One for display, one for recreation, and one for aiming at the face of people in the village who get on the wrong side of me,” she explained.

 

“Fair enough, Katy,” I replied, the fear in my voice so audible that I almost wish this podcast was recorded.

 

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I ‘ent got one on me now.”

 

I breathed a sigh of relief.

 

Born and raised and still currently living in a small village in Worcestershire called Bretforton, Katy has been pretty sheltered from the big-city way of life and its highfalutin ways. The only rat-race Katy has ever been a part of was at the Bretforton spring fete in 2007, where villagers select the most athletic rodents in their household to compete for the chance to win a used-but-still-in-good-condition wheelbarrow.

 

“Jessie Edwards’s rat was on something, I just know it,” she said, unable to stop 12 years of bubbling resentment from spewing out. “That wheelbarrow should be mine.”

 

“Right okay,” I said, still a bit scared and double-checking for the crossbow again.

 

Modern technology was slow to make it to Bretforton and when Katy was a kid the village only had one computer that everyone had to share.

 

“We never really understood how the magic of it worked,” she said. “We thought the computer was some kind of ancient God and so every time one of us used Google we had to sacrifice a ferret to it.”

 

Despite this, Katy has now mastered technology and has become a sensation on Instagram, where she posts daily stories about her life in the countryside, only sacrificing around a handful of ferrets each year for old times’ sake.

 

“It’s made me realise how much I love being creative,” she told me, “I put this stuff out there and people are on board, it’s so gratifying -- it's like blindly shooting my crossbow out the window at night and hearing the bloodcurdling squark of a dirty pheasant or townie hit by it.”

 

I gulped.

 

The place where Katy’s creativity shines through the most, however, is on the stage. You’d think that it would be difficult for Katy to work in an art form that requires language, coming from a place where people mainly communicate by putting different cadences on the word cunt -- but she’s actually been a breath of fresh country air on the stand-up comedy scene. A cleaner by trade, Katy has been wowing audiences with punchlines dirtier than the houses of most of her clients.

 

“I keep telling ‘em to not let their animals in the front room, but they don’t listen Eric,” she said. “It’s murder tryna scrub pig shit off a settee, I’ll tell you that for free.”

 

I laughed. My instinct was to carry on being scared of Katy, but I laughed. She’s funny. Odd, but funny. I’ve not really met anyone funny in the same way as Katy before. Her country ways don’t mean she’s gonna kill me, it’s just she’s out of context and things that are out of context sometimes induce fear. But sometimes they also induce laughter. I even feel odd sat opposite her, because really she shouldn’t be in a café, she should be on a tractor somewhere. But I guess that what comedy’s all about – odd balls, and people and things that go against our expectations. Whether it’s someone from the country that’s spent far too much time around farmyard animals, or a scholar like me who’s reinventing the podcast game, we need more people who challenge our view of what normal is.

 

“What’s next for you, Katy?”

 

“I’ve gotta go home and bathe the squirrels.”

 

I smiled.

 

“Thanks for coming on the show, Katy.”

 

She smiled back. Then she made a sudden move. The next thing I knew a crossbow was inches from my face.

 

“Now don’t you dare make me look like a dickhead.”

 

See you all at Christmas for another special series of unrecorded content!

XXX

​