Latest news with #RosieJones
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Rosie Jones among acts in comedy festival line-up
Comedians Rosie Jones, Hal Cruttenden and Tom Rosenthal are among the performers taking part in a comedy festival this weekend. The Northampton Comedy Festival will host 25 comedians across three venues in the town centre on Saturday and Sunday. The festival began on 25 May and runs until 26 July. Mike Chase, the director of the Comedy Crate which organised the festival, said the event had gained a reputation for having a positive atmosphere. The Charles Bradlaugh, The Black Prince and The Lamplighter pubs will host shows on Saturday and The Charles Bradlaugh and The Black Prince will have Sunday events. Mr Chase said part of the attraction of the festival for the acts was its timing, as it runs just before the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. "A lot of comedians are preparing for that, so the shows are a 'work-in-progress' but they are almost fully formed," he said. Mr Chase also hoped the festival would bring more people into the town centre. "There are a lot people trying to do things [in Northampton town centre] and we should support it," he added. Cruttenden said he was looking forward to performing his show at the comedy festival, which he will then take to the Edinburgh Fringe before embarking on a UK tour. He told BBC Radio Northampton's Bernie Keith: "It's such an exciting time as a comic when you are putting a new show together. "It's all so new, you're not bored of it yet." He said there was scope for some crowd interaction when he performs his show at The Charles Bradlaugh pub on Sunday. "The person I pick on the most in my show is myself, but I do like to chat and get to know my audience," he said. Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X. Comedy night raises £3k for bereaved families
BBC News
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Rosie Jones among acts in Northampton Comedy Festival line-up
Comedians Rosie Jones, Hal Cruttenden and Tom Rosenthal are among the performers taking part in a comedy festival this Northampton Comedy Festival will host 25 comedians across three venues in the town centre on Saturday and Sunday. The festival began on 25 May and runs until 26 Chase, the director of the Comedy Crate which organised the festival, said the event had gained a reputation for having a positive atmosphere. The Charles Bradlaugh, The Black Prince and The Lamplighter pubs will host shows on Saturday and The Charles Bradlaugh and The Black Prince will have Sunday Chase said part of the attraction of the festival for the acts was its timing, as it runs just before the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August."A lot of comedians are preparing for that, so the shows are a 'work-in-progress' but they are almost fully formed," he Chase also hoped the festival would bring more people into the town centre."There are a lot people trying to do things [in Northampton town centre] and we should support it," he added. Cruttenden said he was looking forward to performing his show at the comedy festival, which he will then take to the Edinburgh Fringe before embarking on a UK told BBC Radio Northampton's Bernie Keith: "It's such an exciting time as a comic when you are putting a new show together."It's all so new, you're not bored of it yet."He said there was scope for some crowd interaction when he performs his show at The Charles Bradlaugh pub on Sunday."The person I pick on the most in my show is myself, but I do like to chat and get to know my audience," he said. Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Daily Mirror
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Comedian Rosie Jones issues four-word warning over 'terrifying' welfare changes
Comedian Rosie Jones, who has cerebral palsy, has warned 'no one is safe' from Labour's welfare cuts despite major concessions over their plans on Personal Independence Payments Comedian Rosie Jones has warned 'no one is safe' from Labour 's welfare cuts despite major concessions over their plans. The well-known celebrity, who has cerebral palsy, said it is 'terrifying' that ministers are 'victimising a vulnerable part of this country'. She raised concerns that current claimants of Personal Independence Payments could still end up losing the benefit when they are reassessed. Speaking about Labour's newly announced protections for current claimants, Rosie said: 'They're not thinking about the millions of people who will become disabled in the future but you are also forgetting that millions of people who are in danger are getting reassessed, which could be me, so no one is safe.' She added that she has always been a Labour voter but that this Government was been "incredibly disappointing". "This is not a Labour government that I recognise. I voted for them because I truly believed that they were the government that cared about individuals," she said. "That's not what I'm seeing from the government right now. They care more about stats. They care more about looking good, but they're looking good by victimising a vulnerable part of this country. They're putting lives in danger, and that is terrifying." Asked if she was reassured the Government's review would put disabled people at the heart of it, Rosie told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: "I think disabled people should have been at the heart of the matter from the beginning. "They were never considering the real effect that this would have on us, and I have seen no evidence that they genuinely care for disabled people and our future. So I want to believe them, but so far they're not giving me any evidence to say they will do exactly that." Last week Keir Starmer offered significant concessions to rebel MPs to swerve a humiliating Commons defeat next week. Leading rebels told The Mirror"serious progress" had been made in crisis talks with No10 over cuts impacting hundreds of thousands of disabled people. Changes to PIP and the health element of Universal Credit will now apply only to new claimants. It means around 370,000 people will avoid losing around £4,150-a-year. Existing recipients of the health element of Universal Credit will also have their incomes protected in real terms. But campaigners said it risked "betraying the next generation of disabled people" and could create a "two-tier" system- and some Labour MPs remain opposed ahead of a Commons vote next week. Mr Starmer today said he wished he had reached a 'better position' with Labour MPs earlier, before the major rebellion over welfare cuts erupted. In an interview with the Sunday Times, he said he was distracted by international affairs, which he admitted was not an 'excuse'. 'I'm putting this as context rather than excuse: I was heavily focused on what was happening with Nato and the Middle East all weekend,' the PM said. Wes Streeting said he is confident the Government will win a crunch vote on welfare next week. But he admitted "we've got to listen" if further concessions on PIP were demanded. Former Cabinet minister Louise Haigh said it was "really welcome" that Mr Starmer has "acknowledged that mistakes have been made'. She urged the PM to use this moment 'to reset the government's relationship with the British public'.
The Guardian
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pushers review – Rosie Jones's hilarious disability drug sitcom is pure silliness
Disabled people are routinely ignored, underestimated, overlooked and patronised. The perfect drug dealers, in other words. This is the gratifyingly sardonic concept behind comedian Rosie Jones's new sitcom – co-written with Veep's Peter Fellows – in which she stars as Emily Dawkins, a woman with cerebral palsy whose benefits are senselessly cut by the DWP. After a humiliating work capability assessment, she runs into old school mate Ewen in the loos. Once he remembers who she is (no, not the woman he shagged in the Co-op store room), Ewen is delighted to see her again – 'I thought you died!' – and is soon offering Emily 50 quid to deliver a mysterious package for him. Initially Emily declines; too dodgy. But with the prospect of an actual paycheck from her charity work dwindling, she reluctantly gets on with the job – and is pleasantly surprised to find that her disability allows her to get away with murder. Well, distributing cocaine, at any rate. Such a premise – impoverished disabled woman cornered into dealing drugs to survive contemporary Britain – could have produced an incredibly bleak show; criminal gangs do regularly exploit disabled people for financial gain. Yet Pushers comprehensively swerves sincere social commentary. Rather than being used by Ewen, Emily quickly becomes the enterprise's driving force. While her childhood pal wants to shift the £500k worth of cocaine he has somehow acquired, then bow out of the game for good, his new employee opts to diversify into the heinous synthetic street drug spice behind his back. She also insists on recruiting a team to distribute the drugs faster. Two are sourced from Wee CU, the disabled-toilet-monitoring charity Emily volunteers for: Harry (Ruben Reuter), a dance lover with Down's syndrome, and the stern, ruthless and neurodiverse-coded Hope (a brilliant performance from Libby Mai), who is keen to get stuck in (her qualifications include being 'the treasurer of the official The Bill fanclub' and spending '42% of my spare time playing drug dealer simulations'). Emily also brings in local alcoholic Sean (Jon Furlong), who passes his days scaring the public by ranting to himself in the street. After Ewen insists his tough-as-old-boots mum be involved too, their crack team is complete. The other thing that prevents Pushers from straying into seriousness is Ewen himself (Ryan McParland), whose astonishing stupidity suffuses the entire series. Physically, McParland bears more than a passing resemblance to the American comedian Tim Robinson, whose unhinged performances in his Netflix series I Think You Should Leave breathed new life into the sketch genre. The actor seems to be channelling a similar comic vibe too: Ewen is loud, weird and unpredictably intense. The individual jokes designed to demonstrate his idiocy might seem hacky on paper – 'name me one person who has ever died from drugs?!' – but McParland's exaggerated gormlessness makes such lines giddily funny. As Emily, Jones tones down her natural exuberance slightly – she is the straight woman to Ewen and his bonkers malapropisms and misapprehensions. Yet she's still an agent of farce; in all the many, many TV shows about drug dealing I have watched over the years, I can safely say I have never seen so much spilt cocaine in my life. And as hinted by the flash forward at the start of episode one – in which Emily is pursued through a hospital by a glowering gangster, before running straight into a doctor holding an open blood bag – no matter how dark things get, silliness still dominates. The first couple of episodes of Pushers are absorbing and frequently hilarious. Jones's ability to joke about disability is unparalleled ('I didn't breathe for 17 minutes' is how she explains the origin of her cerebral palsy to her benefits assessor. 'I really wouldn't recommend it'). And she is careful to ensure Emily's responses to Ewen are priceless in themselves. Yet as the series progresses, the comedy is overshadowed by a narrative that becomes increasingly hard to make sense of. Alongside the antics of Emily's unwieldy criminal crew, both she and Ewen have romantic subplots, with the former developing a confusingly chaste entanglement with Jo, her Insta-glam boss at Wee CU, who dangles payment and sex in front of Emily like two ghostly carrots. What's more, our hero's sudden switch from reluctant dealer to gang mastermind is never fully explained: did her conscience just evaporate? Meanwhile, the slapstick and cartoonish inanity do start to wear thin after a while. Although its lack of sentimentality and commitment to hard comedy is admirable, Pushers still could have done with leaning a little further into the scathing satire promised by its setup. Instead, what we ultimately get is a gag-strewn, generally lighthearted portrayal of small-town turf wars. Jones's action-sitcom certainly has its moments, but it could have had slightly more bite. Pushers is on Channel 4 now
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'I still get patronised on a daily basis...' Rosie Jones still feels 'underestimated in society due to her cerebral palsy
Rosie Jones feels "underestimated" every day due to her having cerebral palsy. The 34-year-old comedian-and-writer also admits she still feels demeaned within society - all of which is reflected in her new Channel 4 sitcom Pushers, which highlights how society underestimates disabled people. The show sees Rosie play Emily Jones, a woman who builds an illegal drug empire after her state benefits are cut due after an assessment of her disability. Rosie admits her own real life experiences influenced her writing. Speaking in the new UK issue of Closer magazine, Rosie said: "I am underestimated every single day - but I've never dealt cocaine in my life! "As a 34-year-old woman, I am still infantilised by people who don't know me. I still get patronised on a daily basis, and it's annoying. "We wanted to see how far we could push the fact that society underestimates disabled people and don't think they're capable. "And from my experience, from the disabled people that I know and love, this isn't the case at all." Rosie has said creating Pushers is the "pinnacle" of her career. She admitted: "Getting my own sitcom is everything I've ever wanted - it is the pinnacle of my career. "I thought, 'If I have this opportunity I'm going to put everything into it,' and I have." Speaking about her pride in the project, Rosie added: "I'm so happy with it and I pride myself on never putting my name to something I don't wholeheartedly believe in. "Some people in this industry will show up on set, do their job, then never think about it ever again - that's not me. "Am I a control freak? Yes! I was a creator, co-writer, executive producer and actor so that meant I could have a say from early through the audition process, filming, then onto the editing." Rosie felt nervous about acting in the programme, but her castmates - who include Ryan McParland, Lynn Hunter and Jon Furlong, among others - helped her each day on set. She explained: "I have acted a little bit but I've never been to drama school - I don't know what I'm doing - so to be able to act with so many brilliant actors made me a better actor." And Rosie wanted a fully disabled cast to reflect the world we live in. "We were very passionate from the beginning that even though I was a main character, we cannot pick only one disabled character then surround them with non-disabled people because that isn't really realistic to the world we live in. "I think it's incredibly damaging when you have one disabled character because are they meant to represent 24 per cent of the country? No! And being disabled is not a personality type. "We really wanted a core group in Pushers who were predominantly disabled."
