Lou Sanders: Calendar Girl

It’s not unusual for comedians to have a sideline, a back-up job to fall back on if they get fed up with the circuit. Lou Sanders, seven years into her career and returning to the Fringe after a year away, has two. She intends to use her show—an hour of lewd, good-natured surrealism at the City Cafe—to promote them both.

First project: become a calendar girl. “My calendar’s not sexy,” she says. “I’m a feminist. With the calendar I’m pushing my passion, which is fruit and vegetables.”

The calendars will be available to buy. Twelve months, twelve photos of Lou modelling a different seasonal marrow or legume. Factoring in what she says is “really quite a big mark-up”, she’s hoping that she can reach the milestone of £20 in profit in August from calendar sales.

But the Fringe is about more than tawdry profit and loss. It’s also about networking with important people who can advance your career. “There might well be people in the audience that have contacts from the calendar world,” she says. “The main focus at this stage is getting my name out there in the circuit.”

Her other sideline is where things get serious. “The calendars are just my personal passion,” she says. “The erotic stories are something God-given that I feel I should give to the world, in the way that William Blake gave poetry.”

She can’t recall the circumstances of how she came to write her first erotic story, in the way that a prophet probably couldn’t tell you what he had been doing in the wilderness before God appeared in a pillar of flame. “I was in a trance. I was talking about wangs and buttholes and suddenly I thought, ‘Woah, the Holy Spirit is moving me here.’”

Together, the combination of fruit calendars and erotica mean Lou Sanders in Another Great Show Again will be a great first-date experience, Sanders declares. For one thing, the calendars will be a helpful resource for young couples who want to know if they’re compatible. They just have to check the months they were born in. “Melon and a courgette, you’re going to be a great couple. Two kales? Not so good.”

For couples who pass the test, the show has advice for where to take things next. “It’s got some different bedroom moves – moves that I pioneered myself.” Sanders discloses the names of the moves: Gentle Ben, The Stepdad, and Pauline and the Blind Dog.

Two years ago, Sanders began her show borne on to the stage by a ladder, flinging glitter around, and ended it by setting herself on fire. There’s plenty of fuel left in the daft tank, but there’s also a part of Lou Sanders—a new-agey sort who goes on retreats and likes yoga—who might want to branch out. Not for a while though.

“I'd like to talk about feminism and spirituality and stuff but I don’t know if it's my calling,” she says. “I’ll let someone else do it. I'll be the one singing a duet with a vagina on a stick. Someone needs to do that, too.”