After 70 years of service, no one can deny that the Queen is a true grafter

Whilst the Queen celebrates her Platinum Jubilee, 2022 marks my 40th year in show business as a solo stand-up, writes Jenny Eclair

I shouldn’t imagine the Queen thought she’d still be our reigning monarch 70 years after she first came to the throne back in 1952 (PA Wire)

This year marks the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and regardless of whether you’re a royalist or not, no one can deny the woman is a grafter. And don’t give me any of that: “I’d be a grafter too, if it meant sitting around on a throne all day, eating swans with a crown on my head”. Most of us couldn’t hack wearing the crown for more than 20 minutes. “It’s too heavy, can’t I just have a baseball bat with a few diamonds stuck on it instead?”

Whilst the Queen celebrates 70 years of dutiful service, 2022 marks my 40th year in show business as a solo stand-up. This means it’s my ruby anniversary and I might buy myself something red to celebrate, I fancy jewellery, but a lipstick will do.

There are no definitive dates, all I recall is that in 1982, I came down to London from Manchester, anorexic and with a collection of self-written punk poems (thank you Dr John Cooper Clarke, I owe you everything and I love you). Once settled in a miserable bedsit, I answered an ad in the back of The Stage for novelty acts required for an evening of “new wave comedy”, in a pub in Wimbledon.