Luisa
Omielan

Hi, I'm Luisa. I'm a dog mum to Bernie, a Cher enthusiast, and I am obsessed with Sister Act 1 & 2, The Lion King, and Mask (the one with Cher in, obviously).

I started doing stand-up when I was 19, did it for a year, panicked, and picked it up again in 2008. I learnt to trust myself and do the kind of comedy I liked. I built shows for an audience of girls and gays, and the industry followed.

My male peers had agents, teams and industry backing. I had a dream and a complete, blissful ignorance of how industries work in the UK.

I started on the Free Fringe in Edinburgh in 2012 with my debut, What Would Beyoncé Do?! — no agent, no industry support, just an audience of women going feral. Women have so much economic power and, in my opinion, were ignored for far too long in comedy.

That show changed my life. It toured for five years, became a book, a BBC special, and built the foundation of everything I do.

Then came Am I Right Ladies?! — a show about mental health, body image and self-worth. In it, I did a routine about the thigh gap that went on to have over 50 million views across Facebook and YouTube.

I've never waited for permission. When TV didn't reflect what I was doing live, I crowdfunded my own special and released it independently.

And just as it was going too well, my mum died.

So I made Politics For Bitches — a call to arms born from grief and rage. It became a BBC documentary, raised money for hospices, and led to me receiving a BAFTA Breakthrough — the first comedian to ever receive one. I later reworked it into a comedy special for Amazon Prime, then a Radio 4 series.

After that, I took my work across Europe, touring internationally and performing comedy in English to audiences who were so excited to see live stand-up. It felt incredible to feel so valued. Then I came home and made Bitter — a stand-up special about the broken social contract. How we were told to do everything right, and then the rug got pulled.

I looked at everything I'd done and thought — you either quit, or you keep going. At all costs. Now I'm doing the thing that nobody saw coming, least of all me. I sold all my belongings and moved to America for 18 months to develop a musical about Mary Magdalene — a female Book of Mormon. By me, a woman who can't sing and can't play music. But this is a show about Mary Magdalene — the woman they called names and tried to erase.

Made by me. Because of you. My audiences support me on Patreon, and now I've come home to keep growing it.

I do jokes about everything — from Beyoncé to cancer, dick jokes to politics. But if my work doesn't have purpose, I'm not interested.