Jayde Adams is coming home

For a working-class girl from Bedminster, with “zero formal training in anything other than fishmongery… and freestyle disco dancing”, Jayde Adams’ rise has been indisputably meteoric.

Her third solo standup hour, The Ballad of Kylie Jenner’s Face became the basis for her first standup special – renamed Serious Black Jumper – which launched on Amazon Prime in August 2020 and has since amassed more than 60m views across social media, winning her huge critical acclaim and fans across the world.

Now touring that show around the UK, Adams will play Bristol Old Vic on Sunday, not once but twice on the same day.

“When I was younger and I used to imagine what I’d be doing with my life, I would stand outside the Bristol Old Vic, and I would look up and say to my mum ‘one day I’ll be playing there’,” Adams tells Bristol24/7.

“And can you believe, not only am I playing there, I’ve got two shows, and they’re both nearly sold out, babes. What a dream come true. Thank you Bristol.”

Jayde Adams has recently moved back to her home city of Bristol – photo: Avalon

Our city’s loyalty to Adams is mirrored by her own love of the place. “It’s who I am,” she says. “It’s home for me. To me it’s like a feeling, like the Welsh ‘hiraeth’ or the Danish ‘hygge’; I don’t know what our word should be. Maybe ‘the gert’? No, that’s not good.

“Bristol has something that I long for; it’s an attitude, it’s a sensibility, it’s a fashion taste, it’s art, music, theatre and comedy, it’s working class people, and it’s people who are divided by many things being together, and being able to hang out with each other. That doesn’t happen in many places, but it does in Bristol.”

Now a decade into her standup career, Adams is still rewriting the script, defying expectations of who she is on stage, and how she might choose to present what she wants to say. Honing her skills as a performer among a community of East London drag queens, where she had space for self-expression and play, Adams quickly became renowned for her extravagant image and distinctive powerhouse voice.

Yet unwittingly, those same unique elements that won Adams her audience, were precluding her from being taken seriously as she deserved. Because it was only when she stripped away the songs and the characteristic pizazz in favour of an hour behind a mic in a black turtleneck, that the middle class comedy industry began to take notice.

“The fact that I couldn’t get any more than a three-star review at the Edinburgh Fringe from any broadsheet but now, I put on a black turtleneck and I’m getting the plaudits I probably deserved years ago?” she asks ruefully.

“I think it’s highlighted to me the inherent classism that exists in comedy. I feel like I have been able to convince the very middle class comedy industry that I’m worth a look at now.”

It isn’t only within stand-up that Adams has been building her reputation. In 2019 she acted opposite Miranda Richardson in Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens (Amazon Prime); her starring role as Leanne in Sophie Willan’s Bafta-winning 2021 comedy, Alma’s Not Normal (BBC Two), was “a revelation” according to the Guardian; and she will soon be seen alongside fellow Bristol comedy luminary Stephen Merchant in The Outlaws in which she has a cameo role, having hosted the recent world premiere at the Watershed.

Her expanding list of TV presenting credits now includes Crazy Delicious (Netflix and Channel 4) and the Bafta-nominated Snackmasters (Channel 4).

She is now working on a brand new show, Men I Can Save You, in which she promises to bring back some of the songs that so many of her audience love, “because I’m incredibly good at them, and I shouldn’t be penalised for that”.

Clearly, no one is underestimating Adams anymore. The Times notes that “she unites the political with the personal in a way that may comics aim for, but few pull off with this sort of aplomb”.

And certainly, on a standup stage, Adams conveys an effortless and unpretentious blending of intention and delivery. “It’s basically like you’ve had a secret lecture on identity politics, but there are loads of jokes in it so you don’t see it coming,” she reflects, aware that her rapport with audiences ensures she can make them think, while always prioritising big laughs. “I’m all about the thigh slap, babe.”

As her homecoming shows approach, Adams is forthright about what she wants to achieve. “Fundamentally I just want to make people feel better. I just want to make the whole world laugh. That’s all I want. It was a promise I made to my sister, when she was sick, and it is a promise I will keep until I die.”

Main photo: Avalon

Read more: ‘I wore a black turtle neck to convince the very middle-class comedy industry to take me seriously as a comedian – and it worked’

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