Comedy is no laughing matter

But for Otley mum Ruth Marsden, laughter, as the old proverb goes, has proved to be the best medicine for those exhausted evenings after her children have been safely tucked into bed.

Ruth, 30, who runs youth theatre group, Stage Coach in Huddersfield, uses her evenings to write side-splitting scripts for the new theatre company North Star’.

The group, which performed its debut show Funny Girlz at Otley Courthouse last weekend, is about to start touring various venues around Yorkshire, in what Ruth hopes will be the first of many performances.

And if the success of their first show is anything to go by, the girls have a bright future ahead of them.

North Star is made up of a group of four friends – all of whom have a ‘cracking sense of humour’.

There is Ruth, who is mum to two boys Alfie, six, and Tommy, three, Janine Postlethwait,e, 25, a music teacher from Bramley, Brooke Urbani, 27, who owns her own cheerleading school for children and is a full-time recruitment consultant from Huddersfield and Siara Illing-Ahmed, 27, from Bradford, a mum-to-be and director of children’s theatre and voice lessons.

Between them, these four dynamic women hope to shake up the comedy scene in the North and bring a smile to locals during the recession.

Ruth said: “We just want to make people laugh and felt that there was a need for a new group of women to get involved in comedy.

“We are all very busy but we like to have a bit of fun and our aim is to cheer people up by offering something new.

“Our show involved a bit of cabaret with songs as well as scripts and thankfully our debut performance had the audience in stitches.

“We got a really good response which has spurred us on and made all the hard work worthwhile.”

Ruth, who lives in Otley with her husband Phil 31, studied for a degree in performing arts at Salford College where northern King of comedy Peter Kay was in the year above her.

She later went on to take part in various stage and television work before taking over at Stage Coach in Huddersfield.

Over the years she has juggled her work at the theatre school with the trials of parenthood but began looking for a new challenge as her children neared school age.

She said: “I’d been thinking about starting a group for a while and spoke it over with the girls who were all interested. Then it was a case of sitting down at night and writing.

“I’m lucky in that once I have an idea I can pretty much write it straight away and didn’t find it too difficult. There are lots of places and people to take inspiration from and after I’ve mulled something over and am clear in my mind about what I’m going to do I just do it.

“It wasn’t easy, working, looking after the children and rehearsing but I had lots of help from my husband Phil who was very supportive and turned up at our debut dressed in our colours – red and black. He stuck out a mile in the audience – even though the place was almost full to capacity and said he was really proud.”

Originally. Ruth worked with a friend who is a scriptwriter in Leeds to judge the reaction to her writing.

The response was positive and she soon set about putting her work on stage.

She said: “When we all got together and started rehearsing we could see straight away what was and wasn’t working. The girls all wrote bits of the cabaret and some of the show was really funny.

“But it’s nerve wracking when you go out in front of an audience for the first time – especially with something like this and we had no idea how the show was going to go down.

“Even though we’re addicted to that kind of adrenaline – why else would be do it – it’s not easy.”

Ruth, who is originally from Morecambe, says she gets her inspiration from people she knows or snippets of conversations she has overheard.

She said: “We did one sketch about a beautician who was nothing like a beautician- more like your worst nightmare. She was based on an actual beautician I used years ago who once told me with a perfectly straight face how she liked to grow her toenails so she could ‘scrape them along the floor’.

“People like that are perfect to use in some way or another – although the finished product of the beautician on our show was nothing like the one I knew!”

But perhaps the sketch that struck a chord the most with the audience last Saturday was one based on Ruth’s teenage days in Morecambe.

She said: “I also used my own experiences as a schoolgirl growing up in a seaside town – smoking and drinking in the bus shelter and everything else we got up to. We kept it pretty clean actually and people told me after the show that they really related to that character and it reminded them of their own school days so I was really pleased.

“Both my parents have a great sense of humour – there has always been a lot of laughter and messing about in my family! I suppose because of that I tend to get cast in comic roles and certainly now I have two young kids – you have to have a sense of humour otherwise you’d go mad.

“I suppose I just enjoy people watching and ear-wigging real people’s conversations on the bus - in a restaurant, there is a lot of very funny material when you open your eyes and ears.”

The girls will now perform at venues in Huddersfield, Leeds and Lancashire and have been selected for the Ilkley Literature Festival and will appear at the Wharfeside Theatre at Ilkley Playhouse on Saturday, October 10, 9pm. Ruth said: “I suppose ultimately we would love to do Edinburgh Festival – that would be a dream come true. But for now we are quite happy touring the north and seeing what happens.”

For more details about the company visit www.northstartheatre.co.uk or email Ruth at ruth@northstartheatre.co.uk