In a moment of madness (and there are many in my line of work) I decided to take on the challenge thrown down to us after last year's Funny Women Challenge to celebrate our 10th Anniversary, where my company trained up 10 business women to perform stand up,...

We've come a way in female comedy. When I created Funny Women just over 10 years ago it was the 'single white female' of the comedy circuit. With the help of an experienced (male) comedy promoter, we encouraged and cajoled around 70 women to enter the first ever

When do you stop being 'edgy'? Is there an age limit on the 'cool' franchise? Once you've past the threshold of 50, society is already preparing you for a cosy fire, fluffy slippers, daytime TV and the hot cocoa of retirement!

Every now and then something...

On Thursday 7 March, the 'Eve' of International Women's Day, my company Funny Women will explore how women across the cultural and geographical divide are positioned in today's broader society and how, if at all, they use their innate humour to communicate effectively.

Our annual celebration is...

What is power? What does it bring you? Is the means by which you attain your dreams, goals and ambitions? And does comedy or humour play it's part in the quest for power? Clearly it has some resonance with the good women of BBC Radio 4's flagship programme...

I have to confess to being a bit jaded about the Olympics. Now that they're trying to high jump them into our Christmas stockings, I'm wondering if it will ever stop!

Sorry to sound like a moaning Minnie but my personal Olympic journey was a sad one ending in...

Two weeks ago I was invited to attend the WE Connect Europe conference focusing on all matters of procurement. I confess to not really knowing the parameters of this subject and actually was quite surprised to find out how many of our larger institutions run special diversity programmes...

That bastion of female-ness, BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, last week launched its search for the most powerful women in Britain. It seems that, such are the sensibilities and organisational abilities of women, that we need yet another list to prove how powerful we are!

This coincidentally in...

A friend tweeted me to ask if I'd seen the latest edition of QI, the television panel show hosted by Stephen Fry. She said that I'd like it because the women had outnumbered the men for once.

As it happened, I had caught the last five minutes of the programme,...

After 10 years of working almost exclusively with female comics, I've heard jokes about most taboo topics including, you may be surprised to hear, rape. I was at the Edinburgh Fringe for the duration and, outside of our own female-centric activities, it seemed that misogyny abounded with an unusual amount...

Ah, the Edinburgh Fringe... Like 'groundhog day' I'm back for the ninth year running, in my role as executive producer of Funny Women. This is the place where careers can be made or dreams shattered. The home of cultural 'battle' where comedy looms largest betwixt this historic city's seven protective...

While people from the world of comedy are 'outing' themselves as depressives, I'm left wondering if this is doing the image of mental illness any good. Television programmes encouraging people to tell their work colleagues about their struggle with mental health are good in terms of raising awareness but aren't...

Despite 10 years of running Funny Women, it's not as easy to make other women laugh as it sounds! It's one thing to get women to perform; it's another whole exercise to convince other women that women are funny. We're caught up in a social vortex that insists men are...

I believe that most of us have the ability to be funny. By funny I mean the ability to make other people laugh, smile or react with amusement. We are all born with it - that little bit of crazy which we have as kids but slowly leaves us as...

If a woman employs the direct, masculine approach to any sort of confrontation in business, in or out of the boardroom, she is more often or not described as 'aggressive' or 'bossy'. Men are more comfortable with a woman flirting her way out of a situation than confronting them.

Having spent a wet afternoon in Richmond Park earlier this week flag waving HRH the Queen on her royal progression to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee, I did feel for the drenched military and community entourage. However the apocalyptic rain was also a feature in France for the inauguration...

In a world seemingly gone mad, a comedian now rules one of the greatest capital cities in the world for a second term. I am not amused.

As if this isn't bad enough the rest of the country is being run by a bunch of smooth-talking identikit Conservatives and...

Scanning my complex schedule for last week and disappointed that a meeting I'd been looking forward to had been cancelled, I noted an email from my famous namesake, Lynne Franks, inviting me to her Covent Garden business club, B-Hive, to celebrate 'take your daughter...

The article 'A man and a woman walk into an office...' in last week's Stylist investigates why women aren't as comfortable as men with using humour in the workplace while office 'banter' comes naturally to men.

According to a study of male female differences in workplace humour...

At what point does intellect and gravitas supersede the public preoccupation with looks and age? This is something that women uniquely have to contend with once they achieve high status or a profile in the media. Nobody questions older, fatter, poorly groomed or scruffy men who appear on the television...