Rose Matafeo remembers heckler's Ginger Spice insult
Rose Matafeo has remembered a particularly memorable heckle at one of her gigs, revolving around her Spice Girls lookalike.
- READ MORE: Comedian Rose Matafeo: “I left New Zealand because there’s nobody to date”
While taking NME‘s Firsts challenge (watch the video above), Matafeo, whose new BBC Three comedy Starstruck is streaming now, was asked about the first time she was heckled.
“It’s really interesting,” she said, “because the first time I was properly heckled was recently, 2019 I think. It was at the Brighton Dome. I was supporting my friend Nish Kumar, so I was opening for him.
“I genuinely have never really had hecklers in my life. I do whimsical comedy. I expect that I should get more hecklers, but I never did until this gig.”
She went on to explain: “A man, who looked like an egg, yelled out at me. I was doing jokes about being a woman, and stuff about feminism. I was wearing a leopard print dress at the time, and he heckled something about my feminism or whatever. And then he called me Ginger Spice. He referenced me looking like a Spice Girl.
“The whole crowd just turned on him. I think they turned on him for a very just reason. They were like, ‘That’s the wrong Spice Girl! Obviously it’s Mel B! You idiot, she’s wearing leopard print!’.”
Elsewhere, Matafeo has said that she wants a blanket ban on male comedians tackling #MeToo in their material.
“Ultimately, you are still financially benefiting from discussing the thing that you are part of the problem,” she told The Evening Standard. “I’m sick of seeing sensitive men being like, ‘What can we do? What can we DO? Apart from write an hour show about it… what can we DO?’”
Starstruck is streaming now on BBC iPlayer.