Laura Solon

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Laura Solon (aged 27 as of April 2006) is an English comedian, writer and winner of the 2005 Perrier Comedy Award, only the second woman to win as a solo performer (the first being Jenny Eclair in 1995).

She was born in London and raised in Little Kimble near Aylesbury.

Solon started writing and performing as a student in the Oxford Revue at Oxford University where she studied English.

She had tried her hand at being a stand up comedian but found character comedy suited her better [1].

In 2005 Solon won the Perrier award for her one-woman Edinburgh Fringe show Kopfraper's Syndrome: One Man and His Incredible Mind. After this success, the BBC and Channel 4 were keen to acquire her to produce material for them and in April 2006 it was announced by the BBC that Solon had been signed to develop projects for them on Radio and TV.[2]

Laura Solon: Talking and Not Talking, a sketch and character comedy series, ran on BBC Radio 4 in January and February 2007.

She has recorded a BBC sitcom pilot by the creators of People Like Us and featuring Man Stroke Woman's Daisy Haggard, called Great News ,[3] and is set to feature in a Harry Enfield, and Paul Whitehouse penned sketch show which is due to begin filming in March 2007.[4]

[edit] Kopfraper's Syndrome: One Man and His Incredible Mind

The title is in fact a holdover from an entirely different show that Solon had planned to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe with a male partner. When the partner dropped out she rewrote the show in the three weeks leading up to the festival but retained the title in order not to negate the value of the advance publicity or confuse those who had already purchased tickets.

Solon plays eight different characters in the show, which consists of sketches of varying lengths, including:

an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan
Caroline, an Australian, disabled housewife who is possessed by the ghost of Diana, Princess of Wales
Karen, a prize-winning beautician
Borgesia, a Polish story-teller
a wedding planner from Rotherham
a hunter who does not believe in zebras
Katrina, a corporate high-flier with an irrational terror of the Chinese
a marketing assistant forced to dress as a bookworm

As a Perrier award winning show it secured a run in London's West End, at the Soho Theatre, in November 2005. Solon also received £7 500 with the prize.

[edit] Critical reception

"an astonishingly assured debut".

- The Times^[5].
"The writing is as fresh as a cowslip, as sharp as a kitchen-knife, and sometimes as coarse as a fishwife"

- The Telegraph August 24, 2005^[6]
" It is not a well-developed set. Solon's vignettes seldom exceed five minutes, and so the characterisation is not always subjected to the rigour that longer monologues would necessitate. But Solon's twisted imagination means that the show is jam-packed with delights." (3 stars out of 5)

- The Guardian, August 26, 2005^[7]
"Laura Solon is not an Alan Bennett or Victoria Wood, but she is young, within sight of them and might yet rival them. She is an immensely talented writer with performance skills to match." (4 out of 5 stars)

- Chortle.^[8]