The night before we spoke, Bridget Christie won Red Magazine's Woman of the Year Award. She talks of a pleasant evening, inspired from meeting the others on what is a diverse shortlist.
On the phone to Londonist though, last night must seem a lifetime ago: Christie is waiting at a bus stop reading out the graffiti on vehicles speeding past her.
"A white van has just gone by," she says, "I can't make all the words out — but, it says 'something, something slags'."
From the surface of filthy white vans, to cleanliness of a hospital theatre, sexism manifests in myriad ways, says the comedian:
"Jyoti Shah spoke out," Christie says, about a recent interview from one of the country's leading surgeons and editor of Medical Women Magazine: "Female surgeons are about to operate when they get asked to make the tea... or they get their breasts brushed by someone's hand. This is when they are about to operate, and they have to deal with this stuff."
In 2013, Christie won the most coveted prize in comedy — the main Edinburgh award — for A Bic for Her, a show titled after the famous pen manufacturers' ludicrous idea to market some ballpoints on a gendered basis. It nicely captures Christie's ability to articulate the absurd reach and foolishness of sexism, which then forges her the comedic path to covering outright misogyny and those women in countries trapped and denied freedom of speech: "As a comedian everything I say has to be funny and if I can't say something funny it can't go in. Otherwise, I'd be a lecturer or politician."
It's a balance that requires an enormous amount of skill, and was rewarded not just in Christie's Edinburgh award, but that the show soon broke the box office record at Soho Theatre.
It's usually suggested that success and recognition — at least in terms of awards — followed a marked change in direction for Christie, from characterful comedy and surrealism to feminist and topical comedy. It's not an unreasonable claim. After all, before her win, Christie performed on stage as King Charles II, bestseller Dan Brown and, perhaps most memorable, dressed as an ant struggling in a world where people could only see the ant rather than a comedian.
Today, the barriers for those starting in comedy extend beyond the ones which hamper ants: "I wouldn't be able to start in stand-up now. I couldn't afford to come to London to do the gigs. And, I'd be too self-conscious because everyone records you. It's really intimidating, Chris Rock spoke about this recently, it makes you feel paranoid and that you can't take risks because everything is being recorded."
