Gina Yashere

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Gina Yashere: I've never felt so free
Emma Pinch talks to comedian Gina Yashere about controlling a debilitating illness and starting a new life in LA
May 8 2008
By Emma Pinch,
Liverpool Daily Post

WATCHING her on-stage, tough, ballsy and funny enough to see off even the most determined heckler, she seems the last person to be bothered about the presence of a few extra pounds. But, just like the rest of us, Gina Yashere, stand-up comic and regular on BBC’s Mock the Week, feels the pressure to be slim, and in 10 months lost four stone, shrinking from a size 18 to a svelte size 12. She’s ditched the two litre tubs of Ben & Jerrys and is a poster girl for detoxing and colonic irrigation, she does step aerobics and dance classes and avoids wheat, sugar and tomato-based products.

What’s happened? The girl from Finsbury Park seems to have gone all LA on us. Which is actually appropriate because she’s upped sticks and moved there, and has no plans to return. She sold her four-bed London home and Mercedes for a one- bedroom "council flat in the sun" on the edge of a Californian freeway and a no-frills Toyota, which she delights in driving with the top down. She decided, as her American friends might say, to ditch the junk in her trunk weightwise, too, and declares that she feels "reborn".

"I’ve been overweight 10 years and my weight has yo-yoed," she explains. "I was a binge eater. When I got bored I would eat family-sized tubs of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. When I knew I was going to America, I thought ‘This is it, you’re going to LA and you can’t be fat in LA’. It was either slim down and look normal or get really fat and play the fat roles. And Eddie Murphy is already wearing fat suits and doing fat roles, so there aren’t that many roles for fat women."

On her way back from a tour of Australia, she decided to detox and fast at a Thailand spa, and was so enthusiastic about the process she took pictures of the waste being flushed out of her body. "You fast for seven days and you do two colonic irrigations a day, and the great thing is that it just cleans out all the stuff that is slowing down your metabolism in your system. I lost a stone in a week. But the weight loss was just a side effect of the detox and healthy eating. It’s really about moderation and how I feel about myself."

After years of avoiding shopping, the former lift engineer is able to finally fit into clothes that were previously the preserve of her slimmer friends. "I’m not a big glamour puss, I’m just funkier. I can wear clothes I’ve always wanted to wear, like skinny jeans . . . I stocked up in Primark before I came over. Primark £12 skinny jeans. Love ‘em. But I know if I ever get in the movies I’ll only ever be the chubby best friend, even though I’m not chubby. I’m a size 12 and a size 12 in LA is still chubby. But I’m very happy with that. If I slim any more, my head will start looking big."

Being fat, she claims, didn’t just limit her choices of clothes. "I think it did hinder my career," she says. "At the end of the day, if you look on TV all you see is skinny, blonde women presenting all the TV shows and whatnot. As a comedian, it didn’t affect me at all in terms of live work, but I think it did affect my TV career. I just think I was overlooked for a lot of stuff, partly because there’s that whole tokenistic thing towards black comedians and actors on TV in England. So to be judged not only on your colour but on your sex and your size, that’s three counts against you. And basically I tried to get rid of one of the counts."

Moving to LA is a Victory Salute to those who passed over her for TV work. "When I got that visa, it was ‘OK, I’m going!’," she says. "I think my mum has realised I’m not settling down doing the whole husband three kids thing. It’s just not me. So I sold my house, threw a big party and said ‘Bye, I’m going to America’. I literally came here with two suitcases and started again. I had to buy furniture, TV, buy a whole new wardrobe. It’s been exhilarating. All I’ve had to do to my act is slow down my speech and enunciate a bit more so I’ve actually got posher. I’ve rewritten my intro because Americans think Black people are in America, Africa or the Caribbean and have no idea that there is a huge community of them in this country. Otherwise, they’d think I was an aborigine."

At 34, she says it was then or never to realise her dream in the States. Finding out four years ago that she was suf- fering from the same auto- immune disorder that kill- ed her aunt, focused her mind. "I woke up one day and I couldn’t open my fingers. It literally struck me overnight. It was kind of scary, but even at my illest a couple of years ago I was still performing, you would never have known. But then I’d go home and I’d have to get help to take my clothes off because I couldn’t lift my arms above my head. I was pretty much disabled."

In Thailand, she decided to stop taking the steroids. She takes "huge amounts" of fish oils, eats oily fish and has cut out "inflammatory" foods like tomatoes and wheat, and is managing to control the disease with just ibuprofen. "Now if you told me to kneel down on the floor and get back up it would take me 10 minutes because of my joints. But, I’m like ‘Well, it could have been worse, it could have been cancer’. I’m going to live my life to the fullest and do whatever the hell I want to do, because life is too short. I’ve always lived my life like that anyway, but now that’s made me even more so. I’ve never felt so free in my life."

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Lowry date for new look Gina
Lawrence Poole
16/ 5/2008

AS professions in the business they call show go, they don’t come much more intimidating than being a female stand-up comedian. If trying to break your way into a fiercely competitive and testosterone-filled business wasn’t bad enough, attempting to cement a place in an industry where only a handful of female peers have managed to succeed before you must surely be a fearsome prospect. Thankfully, North London-born bundle of energy Gina Yashere had the perfect grounding to deal with her male counterparts - both on and in front of stage.

“I was an engineer before, so I used to build and prepare lifts,” she tells me from her new base in Los Angeles, “so when people ask how I cope in a male dominated industry, I tell them I’m used to it as I worked on building sites with 2,000 men and was the only woman engineer AND there were no female toilets – so this is a walk in the park for me!”

You have to admit, after that and the inevitable ripe humour she had to deal with a on a day-to-day basis, you can’t imagine much fazes the girl from Finsbury Park. Not that stand-up comedy was a long-held ambition, but something which, despite being a huge fan of Kenny Everett growing up, took her by surprise.

“I used to rush home to watch his show, but it was never something in a million years, which I dreamed of doing. People always told me I was funny, but I couldn’t see making a career of out it, so I studied engineering.”

It was a spell of volunteering work that was to send her on a different path altogether though, as Yashere explains. “I used to organise fundraising shows and we were short of performers so I wrote a little, silly sketch with a couple of friends and it went down a storm.” Intoxicated by the buzz, a spark was lit and one poorly paid show led to another before Yashere was suddenly earning enough to get by. Yet despite bagging numerous gongs, appearing on panel shows like Mock The Week and selling out tours, that much sought after proper TV exposure still alluded her, hence the admirable move across the pond. It’s a decision which seems to have been fully vindicated.

“I’ve been out here on off for nine months now and the gigs have been going really well – I’m doing comedy in the sun – it’s great!” Yashere’s brash and bolshy attitude has struck a chord with some of the US comedy major players too as recently she became the first ever British comic to appear on the HBO channel’s legendary Def Comedy Jam show. It’s a feat, she’s understandably delighted with. “They saw me doing a show in Oakland, California and asked me to take part in a showcase for the new season and it’s gone from there – I was the first non African-American to appear on the show.”

Despite the success and the sunshine, there are, as with any ex-pat, still things she misses about home though – chocolate being one. “The chocolate over here is crap, it’s so synthetic tasting, I’ve practically given up, plus a good cup of tea – I’m ordering in PG Tips now though!”

One thing she has taken on board with both hands is the LA way of thinking when it comes to healthy lifestyle. Spurred on by an intensive detox regime in Thailand, Yashere has dropped numerous dress sizes in the past 10 months, having positive repercussions, as Yashere is delighted to reveal. “I’ve done it twice now and it’s basically change my life. I used to be a real binge eater and it’s made be stop binging as I went cold turkey.”

It also provided a minor boost for the nation’s flagging retail sector too. “I lost four stone so I had to buy an entirely new wardrobe – I didn’t want to go to America all flabby and unfit, I needed a lifestyle change and the detox changed all my habits – since then the weight has dropped off me.”

So, seemingly healthy in body and mind, the Cockney mirth master is back in blighty for her suitably entitled Skinny B*tch tour – arriving at The Lowry on June 1. And despite the potential of having her head turned by invites to glamorous Hollywood parties, Yashere’s Nigerian upbringing has kept her feet on terra firma. “I’ve been to a few parties and dos and stuff, but it’s not really my scene – it’s full of people wearing clothes and drinking drinks they can’t afford – I want to do shows so I know I can afford what I’m wearing and drinking!”

And you can’t argue with that.

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She likes to go on about this colonic irrigation eh? She can shove it up her arse! (etc etc)