Besides a fear of our mothers and disdain for the English, what binds the Irish and Indians, according to Catherine Bohart, is “a love of food in large quantities.” This explains the main thing on the 35-year-old Irish comic’s agenda during her maiden trip to India: “To eat all day, every day.” “I mean, I can’t wait to learn about the culture too. But mainly, I wanna be eating at all times,” says Bohart in the run-up to bringing her Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated show ‘Again, With Feelings’ to Mumbai.
Reviewed as a ‘firecracker hour’ by The Guardian, the special, which will be held as part of the ongoing Mumbai Comedy Festival at Mahalaxmi’s G5A warehouse on December 14 and 15 and at The NCPA on December 16, dissects everything from family dynamics to queer identity, offering a “twisted second coming-of-age narrative” that grapples with relationships, age gaps, and other awkward corners of modern adulthood. “The show itself feels like gossip refined to a high art: thirty-something panic distilled into a torrent of wisecracks and unwise confidences, as clocks tick and big decisions loom,” wrote The Guardian about the hour that sees the self-proclaimed fast-talking chronic “oversharer” weighing forth on sperm banks, a possible role for a man in her life, love languages, her OCD, and the different roles her mum and dad take in their parenting roles.
Known for her performances on ‘Live at the Apollo’, ‘Mock the Week’, ‘Immaculate’, and ‘The News Quiz’, Bohart’s signature blends vulnerable with wickedly funny. Since the time she took her baby steps in stand-up in 2015, Bohart enjoyed a rapid rise through the ranks of UK and Irish comedy. What drew her to stand-up? “Pure, unadulterated ego. I thought I’d be good at it. I only like doing things I’m good at,” says Bohart, who was a finalist in both the BBC New Comedy Awards and Funny Women in 2016 when she drew praise in the final of the former for having “a distinctive voice and a story you’d like to hear” and in the latter for being “pretty much the perfect comedy package.” “I did quite well early on which made me delusional about how good I was and that carried me through the first humbling five years where it became apparent that it would take at least a couple of decades to be great at this,” she says.
From gender to sexuality, all the things she struggled with growing up almost instantly became calling cards in this job, helping her break into the UK comedy circuit. Not long after being named on the BBC New Talent Hotlist for 2017, dedicated to listing the most exciting new broadcasting talent in the UK, Catherine performed her debut solo show, ‘Immaculate’—an autobiographical hour about her life as the bisexual, OCD daughter of the Catholic deacon—at the Edinburgh Fringe, earning four-star reviews. “I think my gender and sexuality helped me in stand-up. They meant that my stories hadn’t been heard yet and my point of view was original,” she says.
An experienced podcast host, Catherine co-created and co-hosts the hugely popular ‘Trusty Hogs’ alongside Helen Bauer, and she co-hosted ‘Shared Baggage’ for Audible with Larry Dean. A regular on BBC Radio 4, Bohart is also an actor with credits including Mawaan Rizwan’s BBC sitcom ‘Juice’ and the sketch show ‘Lazy Susan’ for BBC Three. During lockdown, Bohart co-founded and co-hosted the award-winning online stand-up gig ‘Gigless’.
For all the credentials, the 35-year-old comic wishes she had a process to match. “I have a thought, I ruin a lovely day by trying to write it down instead of paying attention to my loved ones. I say that on stage. If it works, I’m a deity. If it flops, I question every life choice I’ve ever made. Is that a ‘process’?” she wonders. TV host, actor, podcast host, stand-up—she has worn many hats. “Stand-up is still the most challenging because you start fresh every night with a new audience and you can’t start over if it’s not going well!”
Ten years old in the business, she believes a great review or a nomination is the closest thing to a good report card an adult in the arts can get. So, when The Guardian gushed on about ‘Again, With Feelings’, it meant “I could sleep better for about 6 months. A harrowing insight to my sense of self really.”
As a comedian who addresses various topics from bisexuality to ageing, Bohart admits she tends to self-censor. “First and foremost, I don’t try to write what isn’t funny to me,” she says. “I also don’t write about things that I don’t trust an audience with. When you build a show, you have to do that show hundreds of times for one to two years and you have to speak to people in the media and audiences about the content. So I try to choose things that I can talk about without them being too raw that someone could make me weep post-show by asking the wrong thing of me about it,” says Bohart. “I don’t want to be a weepy comic. You can cry, but I don’t think I should.”
Though she has never been to India, Bohart says she has sampled live desi comedy in Edinburgh, Soho Theatre London, and at Melbourne and Montreal Comedy festivals. “Indians are very funny,” she says. “So, they’ll be an intimidating group of people to impress.”