Kate Smurthwaite

Early life

Smurthwaite was born on 9 December 1975 in London but grew up in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. She studied Mathematics at Lincoln College, Oxford from 1994 to 1997. After leaving college she worked in London and Japan as an investment banker, specifically within convertible bond research for UBS Warburg.

Comedy

Smurthwaite started performing comedy in early 2004. In 2008 she was a finalist in the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year competition.

Smurthwaite has toured internationally, appearing in Stockholm, Sweden and Tampere, Finland and has appeared several times at the Malmö Comedy Festival in Sweden.

In 2011, Smurthwaite toured as support for Shazia Mirza and also returned to the town she grew up in and opened the Bury St Edmunds Fringe festival. She performs at many charitable benefit shows such as the No More Page Three show at the Harold Pinter Theatre, and appears at regular benefits for Sex Appeal at the Bloomsbury Theatre (organised by Brook charity) and for Eaves Housing at Soho Theatre and Bloomsbury Theatre. She also regularly performs at the Humanists UK annual convention.

Smurthwaite also teaches stand-up comedy through the City Academy in London.

Television and radio appearances

Smurthwaite was a morning show presenter on Radio Jackie in 2006 and co-presented a show on Leith FM during the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe. She appears regularly with Jason Mohammad on BBC Radio Wales's lunchtime phone-in show and as part of BBC London's Lady Lounge with Kath Melandri. In May 2012 Smurthwaite recorded a 15-minute program for the BBC Radio 4series Four Thought about sexism in comedy.

Smurthwaite has also appeared on BBC Breakfast (including the first edition of the show broadcast from Salford).

On 25 October 2013 Smurthwaite took part in the 100 Women event hosted by the BBC. The day featured debate and discussion on radio, television and online, in which the participants were asked to give their opinion on the position of women in the 21st Century.

Smurthwaite was a credited writer on the second series of The Revolution Will Be Televised, which was first broadcast on BBC Three on 10 November 2013.

Smurthwaite appeared as a panellist on Question Time on 30 January 2014 which was broadcast from St. Andrew's Hall in Norwich. The other panellists on the show were Ken Clarke, Emily Thornberry, Lord Oakeshott and Mark Littlewood.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows

Since 2005 Smurthwaite has performed comedy shows annually at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

In 2013 Smurthwaite was awarded a ThreeWeeks Editors' Award for her News At Kate shows, citing them as a "Fringe Institution". In 2014 her science show The Evolution Will be Televised was nominated for a Creative Carbon Scotland Fringe Sustainable Practice Award. Other Edinburgh Fringe shows Smurthwaite has appeared in include Spank!, which she has hosted as well as being a guest performer, Political Animal, Nicholas Parsons' Happy Hour and SetList.

Goldsmiths gig cancellation

Smurthwaite had been invited to perform her Leftie Cock Womble show, largely about freedom of speech, on Monday evening 2 February 2015 at Goldsmith's College, co-organised by the college's Comedy Society and Feminist Society, with both societies' members being free to attend. In the run-up to the gig, controversy arose within the Feminist Society over Smurthwaite's views on prostitution – she favours the Nordic model of decriminalising those selling sex and criminalising those purchasing sex. A vote was held at the Feminist Society, in which a 70% majority decided to allow the show to go ahead, but some of the losing minority threatened to picket the show. On Sunday afternoon 1 February, Smurthwaite contacted a representative of the Comedy Society to inform them about rumours of a protest which she picked up on Twitter. The representative then informed her about the Feminist Society's vote, confirming the possibility of a protest on grounds of "Islamophobia", and that only 8 online tickets had been sold so far (despite the fact that the event was not profit-driven and expected about 50 people to attend), offering Smurthwaite to reschedule the event. Smurthwaite declined and stressed she wanted the show to go on. After contacting the Comedy Society's president and security, the representative then informed her that 'because of the risk of a picket line we can't go ahead because we can't ensure the safety of students', adding that if Smurthwaite were to express her views on prostitution, she would likely breach Goldsmiths Students' Union' 'safe space' policy. Next, the president of the Comedy Society issued a statement saying: "Despite many complaints from students about the content of Kate's act in the past we were planning to go ahead with the gig until Kate told me 24 hours before that there was likely to be a picket with lots of students and non-students outside the venue. I couldn't verify this. Up to this point we had only sold eight tickets so I decided to pull the plug." Smurthwaite found it odd that the low sale of paid tickets was cited as a reason, because the gig was never meant to be profit-driven and expected enough non-paying attendees; the main objection had been her views on prostitution and possible protest against it. Nevertheless, some claimed the event was primarily cancelled for economic reasons.

Activism and journalism

Smurthwaite is the vice-chair and media spokesperson for British NGO Abortion Rights UK and a member of London Feminist Network and the National Secular Society. She is also on the board of the Edinburgh Fringe Society. She is also patron of Humanists UK, formerly known as the British Humanist Association.

In October 2009 Smurthwaite took a place on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth as part of Antony Gormley's One & Other project, impersonating with permission the Irish pro-choice campaigner Goretti Horgan who was unable to attend. She used the platform to highlight the disparity between abortion access in England, Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland.

In July 2010 Smurthwaite protested at the lavish funeral of writer Sebastian Horsley with a sign reading "Where are the horse-drawn carriages for the VICTIMS of prostitution?", attracting both praise and criticism. Smurthwaite has spoken at numerous rallies including the Rally for Free Expression, the rally against Tory MP Nadine Dorries abstinence only sex education bill and the abortion rights rally in London following the death of Savita Halappanavar.

Smurthwaite performed at the five-year anniversary party for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, and has hosted and spoken at a number of conferences including Feminism In London in 2008, 2009 and 2010 and Intersect in Bristol in 2012. Recently she has given talks about sex and about the intersect between atheism and feminism for student groups and branches of Sceptics in the Pub. In June 2014 she was a guest speaker at the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham Humanists.

In 2014 Smurthwaite was interviewed by the No More Page 3 campaign describing herself as a "passionate atheist" and not prudish in any way. She went on to talk about her battle with anorexia in her teens, "a part of me, almost consciously, made that decision that said, "I don't want to look like an adult woman because of the way that adult women are treated, as sex objects, I'm just going to starve myself, and if I don't ever grow boobs then nobody will ever be able to treat me like that and if I just stay looking like a young girl, by being stick thin, I'll be protected from that.", and I remember thinking that very consciously... A few years later I was down to under seven stone, and I'm quite tall and I was very ill, I didn't have periods for about 18 months, yeah I was very, very sick."

Smurthwaite has written for The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, The Independent, Stylist, The Scotsman, The Huffington Post, New Internationalist, The F-Word, Liberal Conspiracy, Progressive Women, Big Smoke and London Is Funny. She also has a regular column in the National Union of Teachers's official magazine, The Teacher, as well as making regular posts to her own blog, Cruella blog. Her writing for The Independent has included articles about her grassroots work teaching English to female asylum seekers with the group Women Asylum Seekers Together, supported by Women for Refugee Women.

Awards