PROFILE: SHARON HORGAN:Sharon Horgan's British Comedy Drama Award was no surprise to anyone who knows her writing and acting form, and her fame is sure to increase with recognition for ' Pulling', her riposte to the Bridget Jones brigade, writes BRIAN BOYD
FOR SUCH A winner, Sharon Horgan is quite the loser. From a self-described “high achieving family” (her brother is the Irish rugby international, Shane Horgan), she was an art College dropout who drifted aimlessly for most of her 20s in London: working as a waitress, doing the odd bit of fringe theatre and waiting for a break, any break. When she got one – writing and starring in a sitcom for the BBC, the show was cancelled. When she then wrote and starred in another sitcom for Channel Five, that too was cancelled.
Last week at the British Comedy Awards her BBC sitcom, Pullingwon the Best Comedy Drama Award; the year before, at the same awards show, Horgan won the Best Comedy Actress award. What gives? Nobody knows nothing in the entertainment industry. In Sharon Horgan's case, this translates as nobody in the BBC or anywhere else knowing that the 39-year-old writer and actor from Co Meath is one of the most original and talented voices to emerge in British comedy in the past 10 years. Along with Julia Davis (writer and star of Nighty Night), Horgan represents a new and stronger breed of female comedy writer and performer. Her work is consistently thoughtful and nuanced and laced throughout with pitch black comedic effect. If there were an Irish Tina Fey, it would be Horgan.
Why the BBC cancelled Horgan's Pulling– a show that is in every way superior to the much lauded but ultimately nugatory Gavin and Stacey" – still remains the subject of a heated debate in comedy land. Written by Horgan and her English writing partner, Dennis Kelly, the show ran for two series on BBC3 (with repeats on BBC2) during 2006-2008 and ended with a one-hour special this year. It is regularly cited as one of the best sitcoms of the past five years.
Horgan played Donna in the show, an office worker who calls off her wedding to her dull and tepid fiancé and moves in with two female friends – a binge-drinking teacher and a serial dater. Horgan wrote the show as a riposte to the Sex and The Cityworld of Jimmy Choos, multiple orgasms, Donna Karan frocks and faux female liberation. Not so much misandristic as an acutely realistic representation of thirtysomething urban female life, Pullingwas a bitch-slap to the "Bridget Jones" brigade. Drink, sex and self-loathing collided with dull disappointment and emotional dysfunction. It was the wimpy men who cried and begged for forgiveness as the woman broke it off and moved on to something better. There was no hugging, no learning and no romantic idealisation of female relationships. It was as if Ken Loach was writing the script for Desperate Housewives.
For Horgan, the writing of the show was semi-autobiographical. For inspiration, all she had to do was look back at what she was like in her mid-20s. “It was just a lot of time spent in the pub, wasting time” she has said. “We wanted to write it about our 20s in shared low-level accommodation in London, living with people, and without a pot to piss in.”
Horgan looked back on relationships she had in her 20s with “failed skinny rock-star boys and rebellious rich boys” and wondered why all they had to do was to move country to avoid her, but she kept having to resist the urge to phone them up years after the event. She found, looking around at her circle of friends, that most of the males were happy-go-lucky types but some of the females were “strong and mad”. Which is why she believes women will always provide the better material for decent comic drama.
BORN IN HACKNEY, London, to an Irish mother and New Zealand father, the family moved back to Bellewstown, Co Meath, when Sharon was three. A shy girl who realised early on that she had no sporting or artistic talent, she worked on her wit. She felt that making people laugh would make them forget her other shortcomings. Convent educated, she went to art college in Dublin for a year after school but dropped out because she felt she wasn't good enough.
While she was sitting in a cafe in Dublin one day, Jim Sheridan approached her and asked her to audition for a film he was making. She didn't get the film, but the incident convinced her that one day someone would just come along and hand her a big film role. She moved to London where she waited on tables, did low-end theatre work, and generally lived the Pullinglife. She had an early mid-life crisis as her 20s were ending, and decided to get serious about writing and performing. She enrolled for an English degree because of the creative writing component of the course. She began sending off comedy sketches to the BBC's head of comedy and in 2001 won the station's New Comedy Award for sketch writing.
Work picked up. She got a cameo role in Ricky Gervais's Extras, a regular role in a Rob Brydon show, and for a while she was a host on The Friday Night Project. When BBC3 first started screening Pulling, her only disappointment was that the people she went to school with wouldn't see her in it, as at the time BBC3 was only scantily available in this country.
In between the two series of Pullingshe wrote and featured in a fantastic but little-known sit-com called Angelo'sfor Channel Five. She played a police officer who had fertility issues (and wasn't shy talking about them). Banished to a wilderness time slot by Channel Five, Angelo'sshowed some fine depth to Horgan's writing.
She now lives back in Hackney and is married to Jeremy Rainbird, the CEO of an advertising agency. She describes him as “quite posh, like, rar, rar, rar posh”. They have two small children, Sadhbh and Amer.
While the BBC comedy department – the people who bring us Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crispsand put their time and money into Gavin and Stacey– obviously have no idea of how to handle her talent, over in the US comedy producers have been following Horgan's career with interest. In a country that cherishes such strong female talents as Sarah Silverman and Tina Fey, it's no surprise that Horgan is viewed as quite an asset. The ABC network wanted to make a US version of Pulling, but that all happened during the writer's strike so it was put on hold. Indications now are that a pilot episode is ready to go soon. She also has a deal with cable channel HBO (home of Sex And The City) to write a sitcom about two ultra-competitive sisters.
The Guardiannewspaper once ran the headline "The funniest woman you've never heard of" over an article about her. The fact that she didn't come up through the ranks as a stand-up doing the Edinburgh Festival and then the club circuit, as Graham Norton and Dara O'Briain did, means she's still little known (except to fans of Pulling) and can offer a different perspective and approach. Potentially though, and with the US calling, she could soon become one of the biggest ever Irish comedy exports.
NameSharon Horgan
OccupationWriter, actor, comedian
Why she is in the newsLast week she picked up another gong for her brilliant sitcom, Pulling. The fixed grins and over-enthusiastic applause of the BBC executives who had prematurely and unwisely cancelled the show were a sight to behold.
Atlantic CrossingThe convent girl from Bellewstown is being touted as the Next Big Thing in US comedy circles.
