Rosie Jones had to ‘fight’ to be heard on male-dominated comedy shows – so she’s fronting her own
Out of Order host Rosie Jones recalls having to ‘fight’ to speak on male-dominated comedy shows. So, she made her own. (Getty)
Rosie Jones is well-acquainted with being judged.
The queer comedian has been on stage or beavering away behind the scenes in the comedy industry for the best part of a decade, but it’s only over the past five years or so that she’s become part of the furniture on British TV.
She’s a mainstay on panel shows such as Would I Lie To You? And QI, starred in Silent Witness and Doctors, and was nominated for a BAFTA in 2023 for her travel documentary series, Trip Hazard: My Great British Adventure. And every time she’s on screen, she’s been pawed over by sofa critics, be it for her voice, her appearance, her disability – she lives with ataxic cerebral palsy – or her position as a lesbian comic.
Now, Jones is taking the power back, by hosting gameshow Out of Order on Comedy Central.
In the show, team captains – comedians Katherine Ryan and Judi Love – and celebrity guests have to line up members of the public, dubbed Rosie’s Regulars, in order, in a series of categories, based on nothing more than looks and vibes. Think: “who watches the most porn?”, and “who Googles themselves the most?”
It’s fun and light-hearted. “I sound like a megalomaniac but I really do think I’m the best person to host a show like this,” Jones tells PinkNews.
“The fact that I’m going: ‘Look, I get it, and know what it’s like [to be judged]’, sets the tone of it a lot more than, say, a generic, white, straight, non-disabled man who would take the p*ss out of people and you might be like: ‘Oh, I’m not sure where that comes from’.”
For a profession that exists purely to make people laugh, comedians hold a curious amount of power. On stage and screen, they determine who ends up the butt of the joke. Too often that’s a minority group, such as trans people or those living with HIV. That’s why Jones initially felt uncomfortable putting her face to a show where the primary aim is to generate laughs by lightly mocking members of the public.
“When I heard that [concept], I went: ‘Eurghhhh no, it feels quite 90s, quite backwards,’” she says. But the way she runs the show – “with open hearts and no real judgment” – makes it work. She describes it as a “big punch party” where everyone gets a chance to take a swing at one another, rather than the comedian doing all the punching down. Make no mistake though, she does a little punching. “I’ve had 34 years of it,” she says. “Let me take the reins.”
It’s unsurprising that Jones is at a point in her career where making a low-stakes game show is a priority. The past few years have been difficult for someone whose day-to-day is supposed to be nothing but laughs.
In 2021, after voicing her political opinions on the BBC’s Question Time, Jones faced a huge amount of online vitriol, most of it aimed at her appearance or her disability. Earlier this year, when she was announced as a contestant on Channel 4 gameshow Taskmaster, the response was so foul she deleted her X/Twitter account.
The ableist hatred infiltrates her offline life, too. In 2023, she revealed that she had been mugged five times in the space of two years because of how she walks.
Her experience of being trolled led her to create the controversial Channel 4 documentary, Rosie Jones: Am I A R*tard? Controversial, that is, because of the title’s use of a slur.
Some contributors pulled out after learning the title, and disability activists accused her of normalising the use of the word (she defended herself against the claims). The backlash died down eventually, only after it had taken the spotlight away from the documentary’s contents. But Jones still needed to focus on something innocuous.
Out of Order “was the thing I did straight after filming the documentary, and that was a very, very conscious decision”. It wasn’t necessarily a decision made with the hope of avoiding controversy, rather to remind the world that she is “still a silly little comedian”, Jones continues.
“I knew it [would] be quite easy for me to go down that more serious political documentary [route], and that is so important and I am so proud of the documentary and I will always speak out about disability and my political feelings, but I am first and foremost a comedian.”
It’s the double-edged sword of being a visible queer, disabled woman in a famously white, straight, male-dominated industry: you’re paving the way, but then expected to spearhead that change for others. She didn’t want to become pigeon-holed or known primarily as an activist. “I got into the industry to make people laugh,” she insists.
That said, the new show is historic. It may be “silly, wonderful, positive and joyous” in Jones’s words, but it’s also fronted by three women, making it “the first comedy show where the host and both team captains were female”. She is “proud” of the fact, but makes it clear that she didn’t “pick Katherine and Judi ‘cos they were women, we picked them because they are the best, the funniest, comics out there”.
Being honest, it was also a conscious choice. She’s had some not-so-stunning experiences on male-led game shows. “‘I’ve been on a lot of panel shows and it does feel quite contrived,” she admits. “I’m in my head going: ‘Oh, I think I’m meant to be having fun right now’. But I’m trying to fight to get a word in edgeways with all these bl**dy men around me.”
In her first meeting with Out of Order’s bosses, she called for it to be an environment where there would be no “fighting to scramble above the men”, hence Ryan and Love joining the team.
That desire to open doors for people who have often been side-lined in the comedy world extended to “Rosie’s Regulars” too. The 30-ish members of the public who get judged, sit wearing a glaring sign with their pronouns written on it. It’s another small nod to making comedy a nicer space for queer people.
“The diversity, that inclusion, for me went everywhere. I feel a lot of bosses would have gone: ‘Great, we’ve got a gay, disabled woman hosting it, job done in terms of diversity. Let’s flood it with white, straight men now’.
“I was adamant about that not being the case. We wanted everyone to be included.”
Out of Order is on Monday (16 September) from 9pm on Comedy Central.
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