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“Audiences think I’m going to be blonde, cute, perky and funny,”says stand-up comedienne Karen Loftus, who is very blonde, very cute, very perky and very funny. “But I’m pretty ‘out there’ when I’m on stage. People don’t expect me to be outrageous.”

And that, probably, is because of the way Karen looks (ie, like a particularly glamorous Playboy Playmate). So it’s fun to play with their heads, sometimes, as well as their expectatioins.

Karen (all-time comedy hero: Richard Pryor) has worked on TV (the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, anyone?) and in smaller independent ovies, and her play Barbie’s Dolls is being developed into a film as you read this. But mostly she enjoys the sense of danger generated by a live audience. In fact, she LOVES it.

“My face throws tehm,” she admits. “They don’t think I can be smart or edgy. I always remember one manager saying to me: ‘You don’t act the way you look.’ Then he paused and said: “In fact, your act is far less attractive than you are.”

On stage, Karen – who has the most infectious high-pitched giggle you’ve ever heard – “dances a fine line between smart and silly”, incorporating anecdotes about her crazy life and times with bizarre characters and sharp one-liners. As a woman in stand-up comedy, she needs to be at the top of her game, especially when she plays Deep South gigs (the American Deep South, we mean: not Wemouth and Lyme Regis).

“Texas is like another country,” says Loftus. “There are so few women who work down there, and there are a lot of people who have a problem with a woman being on stage. I get men yelling: ‘Hey! Show your t*ts!’A lot of lewd things are thrown at me, so I have to roll with those punches.” As such, she has a neat line in put-downs for any would-be hecklers who are stupid enough to try to outsmart her.

Loftus – based in LA but touring all over the USA- has been to Britain before, most notably at the Edinburgh Festival where she became a festival favourite with her sometime writing and performance partner, Joan Ranquet. She is currently starring in the stage show Better (at Battersea Arts centre) before taking her solo show to Jesters Comedy Club in Glasgow (on May 27). After that, it’s onto a starring role at Edinburgh again in a two-woman show with Lynne Fergusson (“we met at Edinburgh last year and hit it off like gangbusters”).

Karen names Eddie Izzard as one of her favourite UK stand-up stars. “I saw him in New York and he’s just wonderful. And Lee Evans, too, is a physical genius.” But then Karen would be impressed because she also finds time to teach Body Comedy- improv, clown work and physical comedy – in women’s shelters and centers for survivors of domestic violence.

She does, however, harbour a deep dark secret. “I’ve never seen Billy Connelly,” she says. “And he’s, like, huge over here, right?”

Right.

But we forgive Karen Loftus, mainly because she is going to be a huge stand-up star, even though she’s only been playing comedy clubs for three years. And because she’s writing a movie with Lynne Fergusson which is going to be huge, too. “The idea is that we swap lives,” says Karen. “I’m going to live in Scotland and she’s going to live in LA.” Scotland isn’t going to know what hit it.