CityLife

Mother of all comics

SHE balks a little at the suggestion that she's one of the mother figures of the alternative comedy scene, but there's no doubt that Linda Smith, who mixes pointedly topical satire and witty dry asides with admirable skill, is one of the circuit's best-loved names.

Thanks to her steady diet of radio work - Linda is a regular panellist on The News Quiz, but also appears on Just a Minute and I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue - she gigs less often than she once did, which makes her visit to Bury Met tomorrow one for the diary.

"I don't really do 20-minute or 40-minute slots at the clubs any more," she explains. "I tend to do my own show now in short mini-tours. I did the clubs for quite a long time and it was great fun and I loved it while I did it, but there comes a point when you can feel you're on a bit of treadmill.

"In any case, I probably wouldn't be very good at it now because I haven't done it for so long. There are comics gigging today doing millions of gigs a week, who I probably wouldn't know from Adam. They're so sharp and match-fit, and they're so good at it because that's all they do. Doing 20 minutes at a club is a different skill altogether from doing your own show."

Radio

And being a top panellist on a Radio 4 quiz show is also another altogether different skill. Both Just a Minute and I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue are well into their fourth decades and still as funny as ever, while The News Quiz is a staple on the Radio 4 comedy menu. So, which one does she enjoy doing most all?

"They're all different," she responds diplomatically. "I love The News Quiz because I'm a regular on that, and as it was the first thing I did regularly on radio, it really did change my status. I found that I fitted into it very easily and it felt very natural for me to do. All the regulars know each other so well, so there's that sit-com element that you get with long-running panel games where everyone has a persona or a role to play."

For sheer unexpected laughs, Just A Minute is peerless, although she confesses that she didn't listen to it too much when she was growing up. "It's a much-loved institution and it's amazing to think that I'm doing a show which Kenneth Williams used to do. It was pretty much wall-to-wall Radio 1 when I was a kid because I don't think our dial went to Radio 4!"

Born in London, Linda studied at Sheffield University. She stayed there after graduating, which meant that she became a regular visitor to Manchester over the years, and confesses to possessing a few questionable memories of dossing down, after a night's stand-up work, in Henry Normal's Crumpsall bed-sit, which was a crash-pad for many a visiting comic in the early-nineties.

"Lots of comics stayed there," she smiles, "but he never thought to buy a spare bed."

Linda Smith is at Bury Met on Saturday, June 28.