Verity has found an unusual niche running art-themed comedy nights around the country, as she tells Jenny Bardwell

I was taken to museums and galleries as a child, but I usually wanted to go straight to the gift shop. That changed when I was 17 and took part in a public-speaking competition called Articulation, where young people were invited to speak about an artwork of their choice for  ten minutes. I chose one of Damien Hirst’s medicine cabinets from his work Pharmacy.  Growing up in a small countryside village, this all felt very edgy! The experience cemented my love for public speaking – I loved talking about art because you can hold forth and no one can really say your opinion is wrong. I’m now 28 and talking – and laughing – about art is my livelihood.

The same week as I started my degree in art history at Wadham College, I joined the Oxford Imps – Oxford university’s premier improv group – and the following term, I progressed to the Oxford Revue. So, for me, comedy and art history have always felt like natural bedfellows.

After graduating, I worked with a company selling art online and it’s the only office job I’ve ever had. I’ve been freelancing as an art historian, writer, and presenter for four years now. Life is refreshingly varied as a result and a lot of jobs take me by surprise. I’ve had three hours’ notice to go on the news to comment on the sale of Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian –the infamous banana duct-taped to a wall. I’ve had emails in the middle of the night from Australian radio asking “Could you pop on in half an hour?” I never really know where the next exciting opportunity is coming from.

My book, which came out last October with Bloomsbury, is called The History of Art in One Sentence. It was born out of a series of online videos I did during a quieter stretch a few years back. I find fallow periods often fall at the beginning of the year and I’m only just learning to use them as opportunities to ground myself and get experimental, rather than panicking that I’ll never work again! Both of my parents are freelancers, so I was blessed to grow up in a household where this was the norm. Being locked into a full-time job would feel unnatural. It’s helped me to accept the ‘feast or famine’ element of freelance working, and to muscle through when times are quieter.

It’s lucky that I’m pretty shameless when it comes to reaching out to people I want to work with. Sometimes you email 30 people, three will get back to you, and one might have a job for you six months later. It’s a bit of a numbers game. I like to think of my approach as keen rather than needy!

For my art-themed comedy gigs, Art Laughs, we put on stand-up evenings as well as improv gigs, guided tours, and panel discussions. It’s always nice when we’re performing in the National Gallery, where the artists are all long dead, because the comedians can say what they like! When we’re performing in front of work by living artists, who might even be in the room, we tend to do improv to avoid upsetting anyone. Some of the audience may never have seen live comedy before but love the paintings, while others have not been to that gallery before, but they like the comedians. It’s a lovely mix. I focus more on biography than theory. Eccentric Victorian artists are right up my alley. Reprehensible characters leading the high life fascinate me. So much of art history is about decadent parties and dalliances, and this makes for good stories, which is what I’m all about.

I live in Southampton with my husband, but I’m in London regularly – maybe for a comedy gig, a panel talk, or filming work, so I’m often on an early train. I like to use the journey to blast through work that I’ve been putting off. I can get through lots of emails on my laptop while I’m a prisoner on the train! I’m lucky that I get to travel round the UK for work, making social media content for different arts organisations. This month, I’ll have been in Dorset, Stoke-on-Trent, and Derby. Sometimes these jobs will book me a room in a hotel so I don’t have to do the travel in one day, which for me is the height of glamour. I love hotels!

We’re pretty 50-50 about cooking when we’re both at home. My husband really enjoys it and makes nice, sophisticated meals; whereas I don’t really care and make slightly horrible things. The only meals I seem able to pull off involve pies of some sort and if he says: “Could we not have a pie this week?” I usually suggest a casserole – which is really just a pie without a lid – or a lasagne, which is basically a pie, too.

We met in the Oxford Imps and still perform together with our friends in Giddy Aunt Improv, going each year to the Leicester Comedy Festival and the Camden Fringe. It’s really the only non-art-themed comedy I do at the moment, so it’s a nice change. I don’t get nervous before gigs, but just before I go on stage I’m absolutely convinced I’m going to wet myself. It’s never happened – yet! The joy of doing improv or gigs that I have organised myself is that there is no wrong way to do it – I’m in charge.

It’s an interesting industry to be in. If you are, say, a bag maker and you wanted to sell more bags, you could just make more bags. If you are a presenter and you want to do more presenting work, you can’t always make it happen, directly. If Radio 4 haven’t got any money to commission a new series, you can’t pitch anything. If a magazine isn’t looking for more pitches, you can’t force them into taking one. I think the best thing you can do is try to meet as many people as possible, show yourself to be friendly, willing, and available, and hope that it all comes good in the end.

My real passion is for antiques. If I’m at a loose end in a city, I’ll go to the charity shops and see if I can film something for my Instagram video series, sharing what antiques and collectables I can find amongst the tat. I went to one today and bought a little Welsh pottery vase for £4. I’m more interested in buying glass and ceramics than paintings – not that I could afford them! I love the stories behind the makers; the practicality of the objects as well as the visuals. It’s my dream to present a programme like Antiques Roadshow one day. And I’d be interested to read this interview in 20 years’ time to see if I’ve managed it!

This article is from Idler #109.

The theme of art and living well is explored in the week’s “A Drink with the Idler”. See below for more.

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How to Live Like a Stoic

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