Grace Campbell: ‘I could’ve done what lots of other nepotism baby stand-ups do’-Ashley Davies-Entertainment – Metro

Grace Campbell is touring her new stand up show called A Show About Me(n) (Picture: Olivia Spencer)

Not all of Grace Campbell youthful experiences are relatable: as a kid she often felt she was competing with the Prime Minister for her dad’s attention; she went up the London Eye with Vladimir Putin and his family at the age of ten; and when she was eight she got chucked out of her local running club for swearing too much.

But some of what she’s been through will be very familiar to anyone who’s been a young woman, and it’s all covered in her latest stand-up outing, A Show About Me(n), which she’s about to tour.

‘It’s essentially about my relationship with male validation, about me and men, the highs and the lows of my relationships with men and what I’ve learnt from the last few years,’ says the daughter of Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s campaign director and spokesman during the days of New Labour.

‘I guess my first big break-up and what happened after that was what made me really see that I had an unhealthy dependency on men wanting me and liking me and fancying me. The show is about me trying to get away from that, but with random bits along the way.’

She recalls how, in her late teens and early twenties, far too much of her self-esteem was tangled up in what men thought about her, and it often manifested itself in her having a lot of sex with people in an attempt to feel more wanted. It was as if, for her, men were the ultimate arbiters of quality and one’s sexual desirability was all tied up in that.

Her first long-term relationship was characterised by high levels of co-dependence. ‘If I was anxious, I wanted him to resolve it for me. And when we broke up, because I was so used to getting this much validation from a man, which I also don’t think is healthy, I then went to seek it out in multiple different men.’

The comedian’s dad is Alastair Campbell (Picture: S Meddle/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)

By early 2022 she began to treat this behaviour as an addiction that she needed to get out of her system before she could ‘reintroduce’ men into her life. She talks about how so many women’s need for approval from men comes from so many aspects of society, from the rom-coms she grew up with to the joy of being adored by her own father.

Grace’s first Edinburgh hour, in 2019, was all about what it was like growing up as Alastair Campbell’s daughter, so she understands it’s impossible to discuss her career without acknowledging his influence.

‘I could’ve done what lots of other nepotism baby stand-ups do, which is not talk about it,’ she says. ‘But for that show I said, “Come watch me do a show about being Alastair Campbell’s daughter,” and I knew it was a way I’d be seen and sell tickets. At that point it was the most interesting thing that had happened to me; the thing I had the most comedy to mine from.’

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