REVIEW: Girls' Night Out with Kathy Lette

Georgina Fuller reviews Australian comic Kathy Lette's touring show, which came to The Theatre, Chipping Norton, on Friday 16th March

“We thought we were going to have it all but we’ve just ended up doing it all. We’re getting concussion from hitting our heads on the glass ceiling and we’re expected to clean it whilst we’re up there.”

So said the self-styled ‘frazzled feminist,’ author, screenwriter and Australian bonne vivant Kathy Lette at her new show, Girls’ Night Out, at Chipping Norton theatre last week.

During an evening packed with amusing anecdotes, her characteristic humour and salacious puns, Lette shared intimate details of her remarkable life as a writer, mother, wife and friend to the stars.

The former writer-in-residence at The Savoy Hotel, paid tribute to a number of her fellow Aussie pals, Kylie, Natalie Imbruglia and Nicole Kidman and other pals including Maureen Lipman, Stephen Fry, George Clooney and even Prince Charles.

But, ultimately, Lette, author of 12 international bestsellers including How to Kill Your Husband, Mad Cows and Foetal Attraction is a woman’s woman. “I always champion women because it’s still a man’s world,” she said.

There is, according to Lette, still double standards when it comes to men and women and its women who usually end up doing the bulk of the housework and childcare. Lette said it was always difficult to take the moral high ground with her former husband, especially when it came to changing nappies, as he was a human rights lawyer.

“Women are each other’s human wonder bras – uplifting, supportive and making each other look bigger and better,” said Lette. “And they’re called Wonderbras because after you take them off, you wonder where your breasts have gone!”

Despite the success and fame, it clearly hasn’t always been easy for Lette.

She paid tribute to her autistic son, Julian, who currently stars in Holby City, and the issues she had to overcome raising a child who didn’t fit “the norm.” Jules (“Wikipedia with a pulse”) was diagnosed with autism at the age of three and Lette recounted the heartbreaking time he came home from school, aged nine, with a post-it note which said “Kick me, I’m a retard.”

When Lette asked her son what he thought about the book she wrote about him, The Boy Who Fell to Earth, he said it was a “celebration of idiosyncrasies.”

“There is,” said Lette, “no such thing as normal or abnormal. There’s just ordinary and extraordinary.”

Lette is clearly the latter.

Girls’ Night Out will be on at the MAC in Birmingham on the 13 April.