Don’t bring children to comedy shows, says Fran Foley Winston

CHILDREN should not be brought to comedy shows, a leading comic has said.

Fran Foley Winston was commenting on remarks made by a colleague, Matt Forde, who has complained that a crying infant had “derailed” him during a recent show.

She told GB News: “When I found out that this segment was happening, I did put this out to other comedians that I know, quite a few of them. The absolute majority said it’s not right to bring children but not because they don’t like children,” she said.

“But comedy shows in particular, you don’t know what’s going to happen. If it’s established and you’re bringing them to an arena show, you’ve seen their DVDs you know what to expect.

“If it’s something like an open mic or Edinburgh, you really don’t know what’s going to happen.

“You don’t know what that comic is going to talk about and even the cleanest comedians are talking about their life experiences and that tends to be adult experiences.

“It’s relationships and breakups and death. And not getting on with colleagues and bosses and all the other messy stuff in the middle that’s just not suitable for children.”

Commenting during an interview on Breakfast with Anne Diamond and Mark Longhurst on GB News, she added: “A lot of the comedians that I spoke to about this said that they would feel they have to adapt their set if there was a child in the audience, which then would make their set mediocre, which isn’t fair as well when they’ve spent ages writing that material testing that material putting it together.

“And it’s just – you can’t control the audience either. I’ve been to Edinburgh and even shows at 9:30 or 10 in the morning have not been suitable for children, they’re not family friendly.”

She said: “That’s the worst form of heckling really, isn’t it? It’s not a suitable environment for a baby.

“It’s very distracting for everybody. It’s like mobile phones going off in a theatre and nobody answers it because it’s just this noise in the background that everybody focuses on.

“They’re no longer focusing on the show. They’re focusing on that and obviously, the baby is crying for a reason. It’s not crying, because it doesn’t want something it has some needs.

“So surely, as a parent, you should be attending to those needs. The child doesn’t have the language, obviously at that age, to say what it needs, but it might be changing, feeding whatever the parents know.

“It’s actually quite selfish to just leave the child there crying as well rather than tending to it.”

She added: “People have paid their money to see those shows as well. And I have seen some parents arguing in the past about bringing their children to things, whether they were suitable for them or not but everybody has paid the same money to be there so they deserve to enjoy the experience.

“It’s not your sole experience.”