18 July 2026
Dear Diary,
Remember back in 2016, when I was just dipping my toe into writing.
I had a writing mentor.
A short story won a prize with Writers Victoria.
I was always shirking from the shame of not being able to spell, dreadful with grammar and no idea about tense.
Doesn't matter.
My writing mentor said.
That's what editors are for.
What matters is you can tell a cracking story..
I'd been doing comedy for about a decade. Wrote a few shows. Delivered a few workshops.
And couldn't shake the comedy outta my system, no matter how many gigs and shows I did.
Out of nowhere this reunion of old school mates from Sunderland happened in Melbourne. We had dinner together and at the end of the meal one of my mates said..
Let's watch The Little Waster. Bobby Thompson, comedy hero in Sunderland. Bobby did the same two acts for thirty years. Everyone in Sunderland has a favourite Bobby joke.
I'd not thought about Bobby for years. That night I woke in the middle of the night and I wrote, till dawn. The first chapter of what, ten years later would become Before I Sing You This Song.
Possessed is an understatement. I wrote, I researched, I went back to Sunderland and met up with Bobby's son Keith and Pete Peverley who did a tribute show about Bobby.
And I kept wondering.. where were all the women back then in the 1970's in England.. surely there were some funny women.
And no doubt there were, but women couldn't be members of working men's clubs and women could only sing songs, not tell jokes..
And so I created Elsie Bishop, and the book Before I Sing You This Song, set in Sunderland in 1978, inspired by Bobby Thompson, is about a woman who wants to do comedy.
But comedy is a tough gig.
Even tougher when you're a woman.
I went on to do a masters by research in creative writing on humour as a power construct in the wider gender based violence lens.
Write two books.
Move house four times.
Leave a very very long marriage.
&
Grimaced at the countless rejections for Before I Sing You This Song.. it's very Northern written in Pitmatic dialect.. too northern for this house..
Then a small but mighty publishing house in Sunderland said yes..
Let's bring Elsie Bishop to life.
Before I Sing You This Song is dedicated to all the housewives whose lives have been swept away under a rug..
Before I Sing You This Song
Launching
Sunderland
October 2026.
Dear Diary if I'd known it would have taken ten years to get this project over the line. I probably would have written a bit faster..
