Northern Society of Chartered Accountants

Getting to know Jo Caulfield 14 August 2019

Jane Walker caught up with Jo Caulfield – the guest speaker at this year’s NorSCA Dinner – during her weekend run of gigs at Newcastle’s Stand Comedy Club and discovered Jo’s northern comedy connections.

Comedy connections

Most of us will know Jo from shows such as Radio 4’s Just A Minute and TV appearances on everything from Mock The Week to Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow.

Like every comedian, Jo started out playing smaller gigs around the UK, including some in Newcastle.

I always like playing in Newcastle because I’ve been gigging here for a long time

“I always like playing in Newcastle because I’ve been gigging here for a long time. When you first start out in comedy you play wherever anyone asks you to. Many years ago there was a guy running gigs in the foyer of the Tyne Theatre, and he was one of the first people to book – and pay – me to do a twenty-minute set, so I drove all the way from London to Newcastle to do his gig. That man is now a movie star; Davey Johns, who played the lead in Ken Loach’s ‘I, Daniel Blake’.”

Jo is adept at making the most of the downtime between gigs:

“I do like shopping in Newcastle because it’s so compact; I ricochet from Fenwicks – I highly recommend their food-hall – to John Lewis and then down Grey Street. There’s a really good running shop around there which I like very much, because the staff always make me laugh.”

amazing and very historic

As her love of sports shops suggests, Jo’s a keen runner, “I do like to go to the Quayside and go for a run – it’s amazing and very historic. I’ll happily run in either direction, although I think at one end you have to stop at Ouseburn, but the other way you can just keep running and running and running beside the Tyne and I’ve never got to where that stops!”

Jo is always in demand on both the comedy club and corporate/dinner circuits; two very different work environments, as she explains:

“A corporate booking is not the same as a comedy gig – you can’t just do your material because people haven’t come to see you, they’ve come to be with people from their profession, so you have to make it about that and about the people in the room.”

So there’s a difference between writing material for the two then? “Very much so” says Jo “I have a definite process for writing corporates… but I don’t like to talk about how I do it, because I don’t want other comedians to know what I do and then do it themselves!” she laughs.

Jo will, however, reveal that as long as she’s given the information that she asks for ahead of time then she’s able to come up with plenty of ideas.

October 2019 dinner

they’re in the world of business and people

Having done the ICAEW Wales Dinner a couple of years ago, she’s already looking forward to joining us in October, “I want to say to accountants that they really shouldn’t say that they’re boring; they’re in the world of business and people – like me – who are on the outside of that find it really interesting. I was chatting to an auditor at a dinner once and I learned all about money laundering; now that is very interesting stuff – they make TV shows about that!”

The Northern Society Business and Awards Dinner takes place on Friday 11 October – tickets are on sale now.

Read more at norsca.co.uk/dinner

About Northern Society of Chartered Accountants

Northern Society of Chartered Accountants (NorSCA) represents 4,000 ICAEW members and ACA students working in business and the finance profession across the North East of England, Teesside, northern Yorkshire and Cumbria.

We have been assisting businesses in the north of England and producing chartered accountants for over 130 years.

About ICAEW

There are over 1.7m chartered accountants around the world – talented, ethical and committed professionals who use their expertise to ensure we have a successful and sustainable future.

Over 149,000 of these are ICAEW Chartered Accountants. We train, develop and support each one of them so that they have the knowledge and values to help build local and global economies that are sustainable, accountable and fair.

We’ve been at the heart of the accountancy profession since we were founded in 1880 to ensure trust in business. We share our knowledge and insight with governments, regulators and business leaders worldwide as we believe accountancy is a force for positive economic change across the world.

ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) is a founder member of Chartered Accountants Worldwide and the Global Accounting Alliance.