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Ayesha Hazarika
‘It was like girls going wild’ … Ayesha Hazarika. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
‘It was like girls going wild’ … Ayesha Hazarika. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Ayesha Hazarika: 'Labour's best drinker? They're so good at it, I couldn't say'

This article is more than 7 years old

She advised Ed Miliband and wrote gags for Harriet Harman. Now Ayesha Hazarika is turning her heady Whitehall days into standup

Ayesha Hazarika is hungover, but it’s nothing to do with drink. “Politics has gone on a mad bender,” says the standup. “One of those benders where, the day after, you feel it wasn’t that great a night out – and you feel a bit ashamed and you’ve got the fear.”

It’s a week since Britain voted for Brexit and Hazarika, a former special adviser to Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman’s ex-chief of staff, is shell-shocked. She is currently preparing a standup show, Tales from the Pink Bus, which will preview in London before going to Edinburgh. But as soon as she writes something, it’s past its sell-by.

We meet in her Camden flat. She gives me a quick tour: the kitchen where she hardly ever cooks “because I am undomesticated”; shelves of political books and comedy DVDs (lots of Woody Allen); and the things-to-do whiteboard. On it are reminders of political journalists to call, TV shows she is due to appear on, and in big capital letters “EXERCISE” and “WORK ON SHOW”. She hasn’t really got down to the last two yet, she says. On the wall is a framed illustration called Laughing Matters, which says “hahahahahaha” repeatedly in an unbroken block. “I like laughing,” she says. “And when you put my names together, it says ‘haha’ in the middle!”

Hazarika grew up in Coatbridge, on the outskirts of Glasgow, the daughter of driven Indian parents, first-generation immigrants from Assam. Her father was a GP, her mother worked in local government. On holiday trips to the north of Scotland, they would make Hazarika and her younger brother recite the names of cabinet ministers like times tables. “On those long drives, they’d say, ‘OK, who is the secretary of state for health?’” How old was she? “Eight or nine.”

‘Politicians are so scared of appearing weird that they become weird’ … Hazarika. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

As a young girl, she felt an outsider – brown, Muslim, shy, friendless. “My early memories are of being called ‘Paki’ in school. When I was four, nobody wanted to talk to me because there was no one else of colour in my school.” As she grew up, she became gobby – to her parents’ disapproval. They wanted her to conform (study quietly, Qur’an class, Scottish country dancing), but she wanted to rebel (drama, playing cello, debating societies).

She studied law at Hull University, did a postgrad in journalism and politics, couldn’t find a job, and eventually found shift work as an administrator in the Ministry of Agriculture, before joining the press office of the Department of Trade and Industry, under Patricia Hewitt. Her mother, who she adores, continued to tell her she was wasting her law degree and should get a proper job.

Work was stressful, she says, and there was something needling away at her. She wanted a new challenge. So she decided to have a go at standup. Her logic was that if she found work, life and relationships scary, why not do something far more terrifying – try to make a bunch of strangers laugh. If nothing else, it would put her everyday fears into perspective. “I saw an ad for a comedy course run by guy called Logan Murray. Greg Davies and Rhod Gilbert were on it. I’m like the failed state of that group, basically.”

She started gigging around the country. By day, she was a civil servant, by night a standup. “For six years, I did about four gigs a week. I’d finish at the DTI, get picked up by a bunch of comedians, drive to Manchester, play for about a tenner, drive back to London, get back at 3 or 4am, then get up and go to work the next day.”

Do you need be arrogant to be a standup? “You’ve got to be quite weird – you’ve got to be a massive show-off and have crippling shyness and insecurity. There is that duality.” Why? Well, she says, regular show-offs tend to get their fix through normal life – for example, by being dominant in the workplace. But most comedians can’t do this because they are, well, losers. “Standup comedians tend to be a bit frustrated and have to find a different way of showing off – on stage in a dark dingy club. Comedians are masochistic. You are putting yourself out there, exposing yourself to ridicule.”

Actually, she says, politicians and comedians have a lot in common. The weirdness, for starters. “Because politicians are so scared of appearing weird, they become weird. And politicians also have that desire to show off – they want to be loved, feel they have something important to say, and need a platform to say it on. And they also have moments of great confidence, then crippling self-doubt.”

‘Comedians are masochistic’ … Hazarika as a standup in 2003. Photograph: Martin Argles/The Guardian

Has she ever met a politician without self-doubt? “Tony Blair,” she says instantly. “In 2005, I was the junior person on his election team. I spent a lot of time with him and I never saw any self-doubt.” Did she like him? “Yes, he was fun to be around, very charming. He’s the one politician I’ve not seen get really stressed or angry. But to be an emotionally intelligent person, you have to question yourself.”

Who is the funniest MP she knows? “I have a real laugh with Gloria De Piero and Jon Ashworth.” And the best MP to go on the lash with? “Gloria! And Harriet Harman. One time, we all went up for Gloria’s fundraising in Ashfield and stayed over at her house and it was like girls going wild. We stayed up till 5am.” What were they on? “Wine then Bacardi.” Who’s the best drinker in the Labour party? “My God, people in the Labour party are so good at drinking, I couldn’t begin to say.”

Hazarika spent nine years as a special adviser to Harman and Miliband, both of whom led Labour during this time. Her standup lapsed because work was so busy. It is her spell with Harman that forms the basis of Tales from the Pink Bus – and of which she is most proud. She recalls working in the Women and Equality Unit, and drafting the Equality bill, which, among other things, outlawed age discrimination.

“We were just seen as an absolute pain in the arse, annoying women wanging on about different things, and people hated us.” Who like? “Lots of people at Number 10.” Including the then prime minister Gordon Brown? “Everybody. We were completely hated. Every time you picked up the phone, it was like, ‘Hi, it’s Ayesha. I’m the new special advisor on women and equality.’ And you could hear everyone going, ‘For fuck’s sake!’

“So I’d go to see Harriet and she’d say, ‘OK, what progress have we made, Ayesha?’ And I’d be like, ‘I spoke to this person and he told me to fuck off. And I spoke to this person and he told me to fuck off. Oh yeah, I got through to another person … and he told me to fuck off, too.’ And she’d be like, ‘Ayesha, we are not taking no for an answer. We fight on, we fight on!’”

“She has these great expressions like, ‘Come on everybody, let’s not make the best be the enemy of the good!’ At the beginning it was like, ‘Everyone thinks we’re a joke.’ But by the time we got kicked out of government, we’d done the Equality Act and we were like this special unit. We all felt good about ourselves. We did things in those three years we never thought were achievable. It was like Cool Runnings.”

She does a great impression of Harman: head girl, Enid Blyton British, indefatigable. But her best impression is a brilliantly adenoidal, boyishly sincere Ed Miliband. “Honestly, Simon, I just really hate inequality.”

Part of her job was prepping Miliband and Harman for prime minister’s questions, with one-liners and even the occasional joke. “Just before Harriet did her first PMQs against William Hague, she’d been photographed wearing a stab-proof vest, and everybody was like, ‘Oh my God, this is going to be a wipeout, a horror film.’ We anticipated him slagging her off about this stab vest, which of course he did, so we prepared the line, ‘Look, when it comes to fashion advice, I’m not going to take any from the man in the baseball cap.’ Not the greatest line, but it brought the house down. It even made the news. The Sun said, ‘Harriet Harman makes actual joke.’”

Poor Harriet, I say, you’re shattering the illusion that she was being spontaneously witty. Hazarika grins. “Everybody knows spontaneity takes a lot of planning.”

After Harman stepped down as Labour’s interim leader, Hazarika was left without a job. It forced her to embrace change. Since then, she has established herself as a political commentator, mentored disadvantaged youngsters (encouraging them to go into politics), started a new relationship, and is writing a book about PMQs. And now there is the standup.

This February Hazarika, aged 40, was awarded an MBE for her services to politics. Of course, her mother wasn’t quite satisfied. “I phoned her up and I was like, ‘Mum, I’ve got the MBE. It’s amazing!’ And it went very quiet and she said, ‘Only MBE? Not OBE? It’s just that Sushila’s daughter got OBE. I think OBE is higher than MBE.’ I’m like, ‘Maybe.’ And she goes, ‘Oh, she’s doctor and married to doctor … and children.’” I’m like, ‘OK, thanks Mum.’”

Hazarika has stood unsuccessfully three times for selection as a Labour parliamentary candidate (“Oh my God, I’m going to sound like such a loser!”) and would still like to be an MP. “My passion for politics is not diminished. I love it more. For a lot of people, leaving politics is a bereavement.”

But for the time being, her politics will find expression in her standup, which is quite different from the early days. Back then, she says, it embarrassed her parents. Why? “It was all about blowjobs. I used to do this joke about how my boyfriend and I were discussing our fantasies. Mine was a townhouse in Islington and he said mine is that you dress up as a nurse and give me a blowjob. So I got myself the outfit, put it on, lit a few candles, dropped to my knees, unzipped his pants and put him on a 10-month waiting list.” She bursts out laughing. “It’s quite good,” she says. “Actually, I might revive that.”

Ayesha Hazarika performs Tales from the Pink Bus at RS Hispaniola, London, on 6 & 19 July, and the Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh, on 15, 16 & 17 August.

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