How big was Big Bird when Big Bird was born?
003
Here is your music pairing for this newsletter
Clouds Across the Moon - The Rah Band
Well, as they say in prison; hello.
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At this, the time of writing, we are coming to the end of our run of ‘One Man Musical’ and F&J shows at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. If you have come to see them so far = thank + you. And good news for Sydney people, you sold out our two comedy festival shows so we have added an extra one - 6.25pm at The Comedy Store, 24th April. TICKETS HERE.
*** For followers of stack 001 and 002, replacing ‘Elaine Paige’ with ‘Marina Prior’ did not translate or even remotely have the same effect we needed (laughs). We therefore replaced ‘Marina Prior’ with Donny Osmond.***
With those shows came another round of promotion to encourage the great Australian Culturistas to watch us have a 75min episode on an international stage, six-to-ten times a week.
Oh! (Mary) how we wish we could just make stuff and everyone would magically find it via our channels or posters or word of mouth from a cool friend, but sadly, in order for it to reach the middle masses, a large part of our job is doing promo interviews to get it out there.
We have been doing F&J for a fair amount of time now, and have partaken in many of these interviews for many sources, and we are asked the same questions over and over and over again. (Aussies you have been more inventive than usual; you’re off the hook). So, once and for all, we are going to definitively answer every single one of those innovative little questions for the final time, and if they ever come up again we will walk off the set/zoom/radio/ledge and into the sea.
EVERY LAST ONE OF THE SAME QUESTIONS WE ARE REPEATEDLY ASKED IN INTERVIEWS THAT WE ARE TIRED OF ANSWERING
WHERE DOES THE NAME FLO & JOAN COME FROM?
Flo and Joan are actually our real names. Our parents named us after their favourite musicians; Flo-Rida and Jean Simmons, but when our Dad went to register us at the Town Hall he got the wrong spelling of ‘Jean’ (it’s Gene Simmons) and also spelt it Joan.
ARE YOU REALLY REAL SISTERS?
Are YOU really real sisters?
HOW DID YOU FIRST START?
When two to three people love each other very much, they often go on country walks, and when one of them needs a wee about two hours in and there isn’t a nearby pub, they go behind a bush and find a clump of mushrooms. The ramblers may pick these mushrooms and take them home in a crumpled tissue, where they are given a bit of moisture, placed in a petri-dish, and some time later at the lovers’ discretion, are released into the world to begin their life as human organisms.
DO YOU COME FROM A MUSICAL FAMILY?
We do actually. Our mum was part of an Anglo-Irish girl group with her sisters, who formed in Blackpool in 1974. From 1979 to1982 they had a run of hit singles including ‘I’m in the Mood for Dancing’ and their single ‘Blackpool’, which was written for their local football club and is still used on match days.
They made their television debut on Cliff Richard’s TV show, were the resident guests for the entire run of series 4 of ‘It’s Cliff Richard’ on BBC1, and from 1975-1977 were the musical act for series six of ‘The Two Ronnies’. They also supported Engelbert Humperdinck on a US tour and were nearly the UK’s Eurovision representative in 1979, though they were beaten out by Black Lace. They were one of the world’s biggest selling girl groups and were particularly successful in Japan, becoming the first European act to win the Tokyo Music Festival in 1981, and won a Japan Record Award in 1991. Many members of the band went on to have solo music and acting careers, with four of the sisters having played Mrs Johnstone in Willy Russell’s musical ‘Blood Brothers’.
DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER SIBLINGS?
Millions. For we are all god’s children.
WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR INSPIRATION FROM?
NASA.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE OF COMEDY?
Pretty normal considering we started our lives being pissed on by a rambler.
WHO ARE YOU INFLUENCED BY?
Tiktokkers. Particularly the ones that do live videos where they’re selling scarves or toilet rolls or grey velour furniture with multiple family members in the background. It was probably watching them that made us think, ‘Huh, I’d love to have a job selling toilet roll with my sister’. And that’s sort of what we do now really.
WHO ARE YOUR COMEDY HEROES?
Tweedle Dum. We’ve never believed that Dee really understands why what he is doing is funny.
WHO ARE YOUR FAVOURITE COMEDIANS WORKING RIGHT NOW?
Anyone doing improv.
WHAT’S YOUR FIRST MEMORY OF BEING ON STAGE?
We have blocked them all. We do a factory reset at the end of every day and that’s how we manage to wake up each morning with a brave face, ready to sell our toilet roll.
WHAT IS YOUR SONGWRITING PROCESS LIKE? DOES ONE OF YOU WRITE THE MUSIC AND ONE OF YOU WRITE THE LYRICS?
We just do backflips until a song falls out.
WHAT’S IT LIKE WORKING WITH YOUR SISTER?
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SONG TO SING?
No Good Deed, from Wicked, in German / John Cage, 4’33”
WHAT’S YOUR MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT DOING FLO & JOAN?
At the end of 2024 we were invited to be the ‘comedy guests’ on the Christmas episode of the Channel 4 series ‘The Piano’ where we would sing one of our classic funny Christmas songs, in amongst the very talented and very earnest members of the public doing Annie Lennox covers, heartfelt ballads and incredibly cool slow jazz. We played our song in a shopping centre, and Claudia Winkleman announced us off the stage with ‘FLO AND JEAN EVERYONE’. You won’t see us in the show. We got cut from the broadcast.
WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU ON STAGE?
People laughed. If they could just stop then we could call it a day and turn ourselves towards our true passions of soap carving and historical instrument restoration.
DO YOU FIND AUDIENCES AROUND THE WORLD DIFFERENT?
They are all as mentally unstable and untrustworthy as each other, but sometimes their laughs sound different because of the accents.
HAS ANDREW LLOYD-WEBBER SEEN YOUR SHOW?
We’ve heard he is a big fan of our first show ‘Victory Flaps’, yes.
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE #METOO MOVEMENT?
Great. Now show us the data on the male comedians you’ve asked this same question to.
DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST SONG YOU EVER WROTE TOGETHER?
In 1957 Nicola got out her accordion and started playing around with some fun kind of oom-pah chords, and Rosie sang a little melody over the top, and we were like, oh this is great and catchy, and a Belgian music producer overheard us and was like, ‘Hey, I think this music would sound great in hotels and restaurants’ and we were like, ‘Oh cool, ok’ and he said ‘But I think it needs lyrics. Can you write some lyrics to go with it?’ and at the time we only did accordion oom-pah chords and melodies so we asked him for a bit more time. So we worked on it for over ten years and it was really hard work, but eventually in 1970 we took it back to him with some draft lyrics, and anyway long story short, he gave it to another band because we didn’t want to perform it really, and in 1980 it became this massive worldwide hit that’s played at parties and christenings and funerals and stuff and we’ve been living off the residuals ever since. And we never wrote another song again until ‘Drank Too Much’.
OF ALL YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS, WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF?
Keeping the hairspray industry in business.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO GET INTO COMEDY?
Get yourself one of those teeny tiny cutie microphones you see online, start small, start quiet, and see what happens.
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE FOR FLO & JOAN?
Bleak.
DO YOU LIKE FILLING OUT QUESTIONNAIRES THAT “JOURNALISTS” SEND YOU CLAIMING THAT THEY HAVE INTERVIEWED YOU BUT WHAT HAS ACTUALLY HAPPENED IS THEY HAVE SENT YOU AN EMAIL WITH ABOUT EIGHT QUESTIONS IN IT THAT HAS TAKEN THEM ROUGHLY TWO MINUTES TO THINK OF AND THAT YOU THEN SPEND HOURS TRYING TO ANSWER AND WRITE OUT IN A SUCCINCT AND ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING WAY IN THE HOPES THAT YOU MIGHT SELL EVEN ONE TICKET OFF THE BACK OF IT TO A SHOW THAT TOOK YOU A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF YOUR YEAR TO COME UP WITH, AND WHICH SAID EMAIL IS NOW TAKING YOU AWAY FROM WORKING ON, AND THE “JOURNALIST” WILL SIMPLY COPY AND PASTE YOUR ANSWERS, TYPOS AND ALL, UNCHECKED AND UNEDITED, INTO A WEBPAGE AND THEN CLAIM THE CREDIT FOR IN THE NAME OF JOURNALISM UNDER THE TITLE ‘WE CAUGHT UP WITH FLO & JOAN AHEAD OF THEIR NEW TOUR/SHOW/MELTDOWN’?
Love it. Long live journalism, thorough research and the truth.
WHERE CAN WE FIND YOU NEXT?
In our double bunkbeds, making up lullabies, hoping we awake in sixteen hours to start the new day with our usual smile and sausage breakfast.