Smart, Sharp, and Seriously Funny: The Rise of Ria Lina
- By Fred Spanner
Whether she’s tearing it up on Mock the Week, cracking skulls on Live at the Apollo, or taking the piss out of everything on Have I Got News For You?, Ria Lina is absolutely smashing it. She’s sharp, she’s fearless, and she’s got more bite than a pissed-off pit bull. In a world gone completely bonkers, she’s not just having her say, she’s telling it like it is, and showing us how to sort our collective shit out.
You’re a scientist who moved into stand-up. Was that a big leap?
“It’s not as big a leap as you might think. Firstly, it was a movement from employment to self-employment. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I’m autistic. I wasn’t able to fit into that rigid structure. I struggled with the bureaucracy hierarchy. If you came in at the bottom, you had to know your place and respect your elders. But those who had been in the job for 30 years or more had an advantage over those of us who were highly skilled and highly trained.
“I had a lot of clashes with my superiors. As an autistic person, I see everyone as equal. Autistic children, for example, will speak to adults as if they’re on the same level. So, I’d often come into meetings and speak up when I wasn’t supposed to.
“I’d say, “Why are we paying a consultant £1,000 a week and cutting our pay cheques? It makes no sense.” So, in the end, I realised I needed to be self-employed. I would say things at work that were inappropriate and would get me sent to HR. When I say the same stuff on stage, it’s funny.”
Obviously, the autism hindered your civil service career, but has it helped your stand-up?
“It helps and it hinders. Autism is why I see things differently and why people find what I say hilariously funny. I’m just stating what I think is a point of fact, and people go, “No! You can’t say that!”
“It also hinders, cos I’m terrible with money. Because I do my job for the love of it, the concept of invoicing afterwards is a much harder thing for me to hold on to.
“I think it’s the same for all autistics, we’re all into truth and fairness, and the arts ain’t fair. If you’re planning to just stand in line and wait to be the next person to get picked, it’s not gonna happen. I think there’s a life force to ADHD that autistics don’t have. We’ll put everything into a performance and then crawl back into a hole afterwards. Those with ADHD form an in-crowd in comedy, and those of us on the outside ask ourselves why it feels like high school.
“It’s the reason we are who we are, and we’re crazy in the way that we’re crazy. But, it’s the reason we can’t do proper jobs, can’t do relationships, and can’t do life. Not all of us are going to make it.
“I know people who are great with money, and they save up and buy themselves a bit of a pub, or whatever. I’m really impressed by that. I get a little bit of money and I think, “Ooh. I deserve a massage.”
“One of the great things about stand-up is that it’s freed me up from all of the social structures. I don’t have to worry about being polite. My kids are horrified by this. They’re like, “No, please, please don’t send another email.” Being self-employed means I only work when people hire me, but it also means I can say “no” to work, so I’m more in control.”
It’s like autism gives you an increased sense of honesty.
“Ideally, yes. But you and I know that’s not the actual truth. We’re losing the battle against ‘stupid’. We’re allowing people to be who they are. Yes, we’re all individuals and we’re all valued, but I grew up not being valued for who I was. I was weird, and I was different, so I had to learn to conform.
“I had to learn to get along with others, I had to learn eye contact, and I had to learn to manage my energy levels so I could get through a nine-to-five day. Now we have people saying, “Well, this is who I am, and I can’t do that staff meeting.” It’s like they need the world to change to suit them. We end up with a level of ineptitude.
“Yes, the world does need to be better. It needs to accept people with differences, and recognise that everyone is unique. But people want you to adapt to their reality, rather than how the world actually is. Well, the thing is, your reality is fucked!”
Do you think Brexit changed the way we look at the world in the UK?
“I think Brexit was the first time we allowed people to have an emotional opinion, instead of an informed opinion. From then on, people started going with their emotions rather than their common sense.
“In the noughties, edgy comedy was all the rage with the likes of Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr shooting to prominence. Then comedy started gradually pandering to people’s emotions. When that happened, this whole idea of being offended came up. People started to think they had the right to never be upset.
“The idea that you’re allowed to live in a tiny bubble where no one is allowed to hurt your feelings, and if they do, they get punished to the death! You know what? If you come to my show, you have the right to be offended or upset. What you don’t have is the right to derail the show for everyone who isn’t offended. They paid the same ticket price as you. Perhaps people should pay more to have the right to be offended?”
Does social media stoke the fire?
“I want to find the crazy on there. Remember when you were a kid and you saw a worm on the pavement and you wanted to cut it in two? It’s awful, I know, but you want to experiment. Let’s poke the worm, let’s see what happens. It’s like that.”
What role do you think gender and age have in a comic’s success these days?
“We’re definitely more accepting of a female voice in comedy these days. Back in the 80s or 90s, for the most part, if you were a female coming up the ranks, your voice needed to match male voices. So there are some very, very strong, bullet-proof, female acts still on the circuit from back then. They’re machine guns with the jokes, and they can handle any situation, because they are women who learned to survive in a man’s world.
“The way to do that is to be high-octane with your jokes and time-to-punchline ratio, and they’re excellent. Then, as time went on, women came onto the scene and started to express themselves as women like to express themselves. And what we did is we expanded our acceptance in comedy.
“You’d see women entering competitions, and doing poetry, sketch work, character work. Double-acts and music; stuff that really wasn’t acceptable on the stand-up circuit. As a result, what we have now on the circuit is a much more varied offering in a show. You’ll get a couple of women on, a couple of people of colour, and people of different sexualities. It’s not just white men all doing the same thing. There’s more variety, and audiences are more accepting of that.
“That being said, when I went on tour for the first time, I went to some arts centres and they’d tell me I’d sold 'this many tickets' and I was delighted as it was my first tour. Then they’d tell me they thought I would sell more, but then again, I’m female, so…
“I think what’s clear is that people still aren’t as willing to take a chance on a new female comedian as much as they are on a man. If it’s a guy, they’re more likely to give him a shot.
“How many women can you name who host game or panel shows? Victoria Coren Mitchell is one. Sue Perkins hosts Just a Minute on the radio, and there’s Sandi Toksvig. As far as shiny-floor game shows go, Bradley Walsh and Stephen Mulhern seem to host a few of them each. Mastermind is hosted by a man, as is University Challenge. So, it’s still hugely there.
“What’s interesting is, if you look at casting for The Traitors, for example, it’s male comedians and female celebrities. You see that a lot. A female actor, radio DJ, and presenter, but no female comedians. So, there’s still that blind spot when it comes to casting.”
Who makes you laugh?
“Kitty Flanagan is so funny. She has her own voice, but such a natural comic, and I absolutely adore her. She went back to Australia, partly because she wasn’t getting the traction she deserved. I really looked up to her. She left as soon as I started, which was a shame, as I’d like to have gotten to know her.
“There’s also a comic called Mandy Knight who was hosting The Comedy Store when I was just starting out. She was bulletproof and so much better than the boys. She’s also now in Australia, so there’s a pattern there.
“Dara Ó Briain is where he deserves to be. He’s amazing, and a lovely human being, too. When he hosted Mock The Week, he was great at making new people feel welcome. He understood that it wasn’t a competition. After all, when a new person comes on, you want to help them feel as comfortable as you can, so they can do their best to enhance the show.
“Sadly, that’s a rare thing. There’s a lot of competitiveness. A lot of testosterone. You’re pitted against each other in a lot of ways, and he was never one to pander to that.”
You’ve done Live At The Apollo twice. What was that experience like?
“I was panicking. The producer is lovely, but I was given about ten days' notice for each of them. I was like, “What are you doing to me?” And one of them was when I went to New York for a holiday. He gave me a choice of three days, and the first of them was on the day I landed. The third date was preferred so I wouldn’t be as jetlagged.
“So on my holiday, I’d get up at 5 am and go to a local diner to work on my set. I work with someone to hone my set, so I’d sit with him and go through it all. Just guessing, really. You don’t do new stuff for the Apollo, but you need to check that it’s material you’ve used previously that worked.
“It’s not a show where you can say, 'I’ll just keep it loose and see what happens.’ So, I spent two weeks in New York looking at my material and saying, “This works, that works, and I think this works.”
“You’re not doing a normal ‘twenty’, it’s an Apollo ‘twenty’ and you want to put your best bits in. But, at the same time, you don’t want to do stuff that’s already been televised.
“The actual event, of course, is magical. The Apollo is- for most people- the first time you’ll play to a crowd of 4,000. And sometimes the last. It’s incredible, but it goes by in a flash. You try to enjoy it, but you can’t because your brain is going, “What am I doing, what am I saying next, oh, they didn’t laugh at that bit?” Everything is whirring through your head.
“I got heckled in both of my Apollo sets. I mean, both times! What is it about me that makes people want to shout at me? In one of them, someone shouted, “I love you!” in the middle of my set.
“In the second set, I was talking about sending dick pics to women. This guy from the balcony shouted, “I disagree!” At the time, I thought he was just a toxic male thinking he’d just send his pic to anyone he liked. In the moment, you can’t really think. You just wonder why you’re being attacked. Hey, I’m recording a TV show. Why are people heckling me? It was only when I came off stage, I realised he was gay, and he didn’t send dick picks to women.”
Let’s talk about your current living arrangements. You’re divorced, but you still live with your husband. How does that work?
“Publicly, I act really smug. Like, aren’t we amazing people? It was one of those things where the relationship died over a number of years. So, we were used to living together. But it’s for the kids. We decided we love the kids more than we hate each other. I’m away so often for work; if I had a separate house, it would mean I’d hardly see the kids. It means I can travel, come home, and see them first thing in the morning. It’s not all roses and champagne, but the only real difference is that instead of sleeping next to each other, now we’re in bunk beds. It’s the longest I've been on top in years.”
Tell us about your forthcoming tour, Riabellion.
“My first tour, Riawakening, was about getting divorced, living with my ex, and moving on as a woman. The result was that I’m really happy on my own. I’m very happy to be single. It’s a great place to be as a woman. In Riabellion, we’ve moved on from that and are now battling the war against ‘stupid’, and everything we’re doing is wrong.
“The way that we raise children is wrong. The way that women react to men on dating apps is wrong. We’re so entrenched in our own opinions on how things should be done, we’re not looking logically at how things should be done.
“I’ve put a lot of autism into it. We hear a lot from autistic people, but very few who have only recently been diagnosed in later life. There’s a lot of “Let me tell you all about my recent autism diagnosis,” and I’m like, “No. You need to live with it for a couple of years before you comment on it.” I got my diagnosis back when you couldn’t really talk about it.
“The level of sacrifices and changes I had to make just so that I could work in this world is the exact thing that no one is prepared to do anymore. That’s why we’re falling apart. Have ADHD or whatever, take the drugs, but get over it. We’re not going to meet you in the middle, cos guess what? The middle sucks.
“I’m just a proper Asian mum. I’m like, “Just get over yourself, and get on with it.” I tell people I’m autistic because I can tell them, but I don’t lead with it. Sometimes people don’t believe me, because I don’t seem autistic. That’s because I’ve learned how to mask it. And now I’ve learned it, people have the audacity to ask it, I’m autistic because I’ve had to learn how to act like them?
“We’ve had a lot of times in recent years where people have stood up and said, “I matter.” Yes, you matter, but no one’s going to bend around you just because you realise you matter.”
If you want to know what the real Riabellion is, you’ll need to catch Ria on tour.
For the latest tour news, check out rialina.com