Aisling Bea

You can check out her website.

Please welcome Aisling Bea.

Whoo.

[audience cheering]

It's going to be on HBO.

It starts September 20th, starring Sharon Horgan, Harriet Walter, Aisling Bea, Rory Kinnear.

And it kind of...

If you look into it, it kind of feels very similar to Rooster in a way.

And, uh, and so the- after it, every- they were all going to the Pleasance Dome, and it was like...

And I remember, like, Aisling Bea was there and Dara Ó Briain and Nish Kumar and all, all these famous people and that were there.

You gotta get in.

You gotta get in.

Of course, there's loads of exceptions.

But women like Sharon Horgan, Aisling Bea as well, other writers as well, have really created these, like, you know, Bad Sisters.

I know that was an adaptation.

Catastrophe, divorce, pulling.

Each week we're joined by amazing comedian guests and writers to discuss some wonderful and crucially weird books.

Previous guests include Naomi Klein, Graham Norton, Maggie O'Farrell, Sophie Ellis-Bexter, David Nicholls, Nish Kumar, Ian Ranking, Harriet Water, Marianne Keyes, Yomi Adekoke, Aisling B, Kate Moss, Roisin Conaty, Eliza Clark, Andy Osho, and so many more who've joined us to talk about reading and being a weirdo.

And this series will be no different.

We have some incredible guests coming up, like Jenny Eclair, Ardlo Hamnan, Rebecca F. Kwong, Andre Asselman, Josie Long, and so many more.

And then that's been reinforced over centuries and thousands and thousands of years.

I actually saw, do you know the comedian Aisling Bea?

No, I don't.

She's an Irish comedian.

I saw her live a few months ago.

And she was talking about how she'd just become a mom and just had her first child.

Over the four decades since, the Gilded Balloon has become one of the defining venues of the Fringe, helping to launch performers including Peter Kay, Eddie Izzard, Bill Bailey, Dylan Moran and Tim Minchin.

Now Karen also created the legendary late night show Late and Live and the newcomer competition So You Think You're Funny whose winners include Lee Mack, Aisling Bea, Tommy Tiernan and Rona Cameron.

Now her daughter Katie grew up immersed in the fringe and eventually joined the family business in 2014 and she now runs the Gilded Balloon alongside her mum continuing its commitment to discovering emerging Scottish and international talent.

Together they've steered the company through an ever-changing comedy industry, the loss of its original cowgate home to fire, the pandemic shutdown and the particular complexities of running a major cultural institution as both business partners and family.