MARION SAUVEBOIS discovers that moving home can inspire comedy

JO CAULFIELD recently moved to her forever home.

But the bliss of signing on the dotted lines soon made way for frustration, bafflement and hair-pulling as she fell headfirst down the rabbit hole of customer service; batting off dazed builders, suited goons and wading through jargon and mind-boggling sales pitches.

"When you move house, you're always dealing with a lot of people," she jumps in warmly. "I found the workmen - the people with skills - were brilliant. And everyone else trying to sell you something was horrible. I mean the ridiculous questions they ask, like 'How do you want your doors to close?' I don't know, all the way? This is how kitchens end up costing £30,000. They say things like, 'When you open your cupboard do you want there to be a light?' And you go,'Yes, I do!' Then I learnt to say no, to everything they offered."

Her wallet and iron-will were sorely tested by wily peddlers when she and her Aberdonian husband moved pads in Edinburgh. But it is her patience and the grammar snob inside her which were truly pushed to the brink in her surreal tete-a-tete with bank clerks.

"They just talk in way that they've invented in customer services," the notoriously forthright comedian happily rants on, relishing the opportunity to get the months of hardship off her chest.

"They say things like, 'What can myself do for yourself?' When did people start saying that? They think it makes them sound more correct but it doesn't. I know it's things they've been told to say, they don't talk like that normally. I was buying a pair of shoes and the woman was taking the money for the shoes and said, 'So you're just out buying shoes today?' And I just stood there staring at her. What could I say to that? If people were left to be themselves it would be a lot better."

This prolonged ordeal has provided her with inspiration - and ample ammunition - for her latest show, The Customer Is Always Wrong. And from building societies and pie-eyed paint-slingers to the poor sod behind the till at Tesco, few escape her razor-sharp tongue and cracking play-by-play of her run-ins with contractors.

"We had this painter," she chuckles, pausing to catch her breath. "He was really good at his job but he drank a lot. And sometimes for the first hour he would just stand there, staring at the wall puzzled, drinking his tea until it dawned on him why he was there. And then he was brilliant. We always had to factor in that it would take him about an hour to get over his hangover."

"We are nearly there now," she announces ecstatic at the prospect of sweet release from the Kafkaesque experience of renovating a home.

Never one to mince her words, the outspoken comic is routinely hailed as the mouthpiece for the silently frustrated - those too polite to openly vent - and wears her brutal honesty like a badge of honour.

"I love it when it see people in the audience going, 'Yes!' Things that frustrate you really get you going and it releases something in people. Afterwards people have come and said it was cathartic. That's our way of getting our own back on them. It's about daring to say it."

Far from a mighty meanie taking aim at the world's shortcomings from her lofty stand-up pedestal, Jo is an equal opportunist and doesn't hesitate to bare her own flaws on stage: like her knack for throwing her two cents in without the faintest clue what she is in fact prattling on about.

"There were friends of a friend visiting Edinburgh and they were asking the Museum of Modern Art so I said, 'It's wonderful, you must go there.' They asked, 'Do you go you often' and I said, 'Oh yes, yes.' But they started asking about what pieces they had and the current exhibition and I had to completely bail out. I just went, 'I don't really know, I only go to the tea room'. I started telling them how nice the tea was there..." Not her finest moment.

Her quick wit and predilection for joshing around tipped her for a thriving stand-up career and yet she admits comedy found her rather than the other way around.

"I was interested in comedy more than normal people but I didn't realise it was something you could really do, that you could just go to a comedy club and they'd let you go on - until a friend of mine did an open mic spot," recalls the 51-year-old. "I went and watched him at the Comedy Store and he did really badly, people started talking when he was on," she cringes.

His slow death on stage should have acted as a cautionary tale but Jo's competitive spirit kicked in and, undaunted, she signed up for a slot.

"There was something about the simplicity of how you got into it so I gave it a go," she muses. "I got some laughs and I was hooked immediately. The first time you're innocent in a way, full of energy and you don't know what you should be afraid of. Then the next time the fear kicks in. As you go on the fear gets worse. It was like that for the first couple of years," she confesses. "But when it's good it's so good, you chase that feeling. Just because you're terrified doesn't mean you're not going to be good at it."

With decades on the circuit, not to mention TV and radio stints under her belt and a spell penning some of Graham Norton’s best quips, she is well and truly past the crippling jitters phase. As for jokes, the seasoned writer is not at risk of running out anytime soon.

"You kind of treat your life as material, that's how you find stuff," she says warmly. "You've always got a bit of an antenna on. I'm a great believer in the subconscious. In the back of your head, it's working away. My brain must be a joke factory - it has to be."

Jo Caulfield will be at the Arts Centre on October 9. To book go to swindontheatres.co.uk. or call 01793 524 481.