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Helen Lederer - Not That I'm Bitter

Join Helen in a beautiful new venue for an afternoon of stand-up, chat and book signings! Her new book 'Not That I'm Bitter' launches on 11th April, and she's bringing it to Bath Comedy Festival first!

Talking to Helen will be acclaimed actor Pavel Douglas.

About the book:

"I invite you to imagine a time when women didn't do comedy unless they were fat, or an impressionist, or enabled by a man. Be happy you weren't around in the '80s. But I was. I needed to write this"

A hilarious and alarmingly honest memoir by one of Britain's first female stand-up comedians of the 80s, when Alternative Comedy created a new generation of TV heroes, and when women were seen as 'high maintenance'.

A regular on the stand-up circuit and new-wave sketch shows that launched the careers of today's comedy national treasures, Helen performed on stage and TV with other household names from that time.

The child of a Czech wartime refugee, she was never part of the mainstream. Her powerful, frank, moving and characteristically funny memoir, reveals exactly how tough it was for a woman to break through. Even in the ground-breaking 1980s, it was as much a struggle for women to be seen and heard in comedy as in any boardroom or workplace, and just as hard to avoid predators.

Here in her first full account of her life, Helen Lederer is in joyous flow, mixing startling self-revelation with nail-sharp observation. How does humour help to cope with a lifelong battle with weight and low-self-esteem, diet-pill addiction, or dependence on steroid injections? How can laughter defeat the darker moments, despite enormous success, the constant self-sabotage of always feeling a failure?

Occasionally painful, yet unashamedly revealing, this laugh-out- loud account offers a front row seat to Helen's life as a pioneering female stand-up comedian, who out of anger, is now creating opportunities for other witty women.

"This wildly entertaining ride through Helen's fabulous life is funny, adorable, and thought-provoking in equal measure, rather like the dazzling author herself" - Joanna Lumley

"Dizzy dippy and divinely funny Helen Lederer takes you on an insanely readable tour through her chaotically wonderful life. Under her costume of the madcap and the daft, there ticks a very, very smart brain and there beats a most warm and kindly heart. It's a wonderful read" - Stephen Fry