Comedy
Interview
Nurse Georgie Carroll is always getting (incorrectly) diagnosed by her fans
Get to know the nurse-turned-comic as she tours the UK with latest show Infectious
Georgie Carroll has spent years turning her experiences in healthcare into comedy, building a career that has taken her from Australia’s comedy circuit to audiences across the UK. But while nursing provides a rich source of material, the Manchester-born, Adelaide-based comic says comedy was always the ambition. “This was born out of wanting to bring people fun, wanting to make people laugh until they hurt,” she explains.
Having spent around eight years juggling nursing and comedy, Carroll finally stepped away from the profession around 2018, only to return during the COVID-19 pandemic when touring came to a halt. She assumed her comedy career might have stalled, too, but found the opposite was true: “It just got bigger and better.”
Her appearance on Britain’s Got Talent in 2023 brought her to a much wider UK audience, but Carroll is keen to point out that success did not happen overnight. “There’d been a decade and a half of work before that,” she says, while remaining ever grateful for the show and the opportunities it brought. “Everyone tells you not to do it as a comic,” she says. “I loved it, being around that much joy and everybody trying to be the very best at what they love doing, from a depressed Welshman’s choir to a one-legged Korean dance troupe to it. Just all of these people really, really wanting to be the best they could be at something. I just thought it was a brilliant thing to be part of.”
From Adam Kay to Ken Jeong and even Harry Hill, Carroll joins a long line of performers who have drawn on the crossover between medicine and comedy. Does the appeal lie in a desire to process the heavier aspects of life and mortality? For Carroll, it comes down to something more universal. “It’s just incredibly human. We’re quite judgemental, but we have a love of all people. There is nothing, you absolutely nothing you could have done, or are going to do next, that would stop me caring for you.”
That compassion sits alongside the irreverence of her material, while her fellow healthcare workers, who “hunt in packs” for a bit of fun, remain among her favourite audiences. “The healthcare audience are a gift, mate,” she says. “They love a night out.”
Ahead of her latest show, Infectious, currently touring across the UK, we sat down with Carroll to ask the pressing questions like…
Who would you most like to be stuck on a lift with?
A lift repair man. It wouldn’t be anyone famous. It would be someone super old. But comfy! They’ve got to be comfy in the lift. And I just love nattering to people I’ve not met before. Especially oldies. I love old people like people love dogs. So that’s who I’d have lived with. Or a repairman.
So… preferably be a retired repairman?
Haha, yeah let’s go with that.
Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?
Well, funnily enough, I would be in a lift with Trump, not because I like Trump. I want to like everybody is my thing. I would have to listen to him and let him just talk himself into a corner. I don’t know. But it isn’t that. Who would I not like to be in a lift with? Somebody. Somebody mean.
I’m open to anybody’s opinions. That’s nursing. I don’t care what your opinion, your religion, your race, your political affiliations. You could be a Nazi, I would still look after you.
Who would I not like to be in the lift with? Oh god, I can’t think of a person. A cannibal.
What’s the weirdest interaction you’ve ever had with a famous person?
I was in a bowling alley when I was 14 or 15. I’m in Bury with me mates. I see Mick Hucknall the Simply Red singer, sort of just hanging around the bar bit. So I go up to him and I’m like, “Are you Mick Hucknall?” He’s like, “Yeah”. I said, “Do you want a snog?” And he went, “Yeah.”
Then we went out the back and we snogged, and then it turns out it wasn’t Mick Hucknall. It was just a pedo. He was just white with dreads, I think. And of course, you couldn’t just Google it back then, but then in the papers, he’d done something in Holland or something. He wasn’t there. It wasn’t him.
What work of yours didn’t get the attention you think it deserved?
Oh, I don’t think any of it deserves attention. Something that got attention and I was like, why?, was my podcast. I hated making my podcast at the beginning. People listen to it and I’m like, why? It’s just waffle, mate. I don’t listen to podcasts, but now I’ve got it a place I like now, but yeah. It got attention and I was thinking if people like this, I don’t understand what they like.
I throw material away very easily. I know what I think’s funny, but I don’t expect anyone to laugh and then they do and yeah. Some of this sounds more arrogant than it’s meant to.
What did the 12-year-old you imagine that you’d be doing now?
This. I wanted to be a mum. My parents were getting divorced and, for, in some kind of revolt, I was like, if I get married, I’m never divorcing. You know, I wanted the forever. I don’t know if I’ve got forever at the moment, but we’re 30 years in.
I wanted attention. Probably this or a pop star. I didn’t know it would be nursing. But I really loved nursing as well. It’s this. I pinch myself. I’ve got what I want and I think it’s going to go away. The worst thing about this is it’s going to go away at some point.
Is that something you think about a lot?
That’s one that I have to… some of this job is driving for a long distances, you know, and I’m just like, don’t you dare fucking whinge, girl. Don’t dare whinge. Because this is what you wanted!
What’s the worst advice you’ve ever been given?
I’m not somebody who listens to people’s advice. So maybe I’ve had it and didn’t listen. Tony, my manager, says “The worst advice I ever got was always wipe backwards.”
What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
Bakery. It wasn’t, it wasn’t the job. I think any job or most jobs have worth. I think it’s the people you work with. The woman who ran it, I would have, I would have had her as a right old troll, but now I know she was grieving. Why am I trying to give this pathos? But she was horrible. It was me first job, you know, like you were so excited to be there and be useful and get some cash.
I’m not good at maths. And all of the prices of the pies things were stupid numbers like 47 pence. Do you know what I mean? You had to add them up in your head.
If you have to have a song playing every time you walked into a room, what would that be?
I would kill myself, because I like variety. I’m just constantly looking for new things, but thinking about it, a lot of them have a vibe. ‘Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy’. ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’. ‘The Conga’. It’s happy. I want people to feel energy.
Do you have a walkout song at the moment on your tour?
Yeah, it’s Snoop Dogg and a Charlie something or other and it’s called Infectious. It’s just a good little walk on and it suits the show.
What’s the skill that no one else knows you’re great at?
Well, I already saved lives and I tell jokes. So they’re pretty good. I would go, I’m super flexible, more than you’d expect for a big girl. Like, look at that! That’s my finger. I can just do shit, I can do shit. I can do that with a lot on my body to the point where I think I’ve got a syndrome called Ehlers-Danlos, but no doctor will agree with me.
Do fans ever try and get you to help with any ailments or anything like that?
The opposite. Online, people tell me I’ve got diseases because I’ve got such a medical fan base. I am… just large. I’m just a large person and I’m perfectly fine with it, but people often say, do you think she’s got lipoedema, which is like an unusual fat storage condition.
And then people have said, a lot of the jokes that I talk about that are medical, it’ll be prolapse, it’ll be poor vision, it will be knee replacements at an early age, and then they’ll go, she’s got Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, hasn’t she? You know, so people will discuss things that they think I’ve got – that I haven’t got!
What was the last show you went to?
No one, yeah, no one will know them. I’ve just finished festival season in Australia. I finished festival season and a new one I love is Alexei Toliopoulos. The show is called VHS. He’s a cinephile, which he describes as somebody who would love to fuck movies. To watch a bloke in his 30s talking about something he is passionate about and funny about at the same time was brilliant. So he was a great stand-up that I really enjoyed. I don’t think he’s got any plans to go into UK, but follow him online.
Do you have any superstitions?
I really, really respect the fact that people bought a ticket. I want every night to feel like opening night. So there’s got to be a nap. There’s got to be nutrition. I can’t be angry about anything when I walk on stage. So I have to sort all that out before the nap, like if I’m angry about something, if I need to talk to a venue about something or sort out a ticketing issue, that will happen at one in the afternoon and then when I wake up after the nap, it’s only the show.
And I have to be clean when I go on stage. Like even when I’ve got two shows in a day, I will have a shower in between, do all my makeup again, and pretend that it’s the first show. I have to feel like each show is as loved as the last one.
What’s your most controversial food opinion?
I would like to normalise licking the plate in restaurants. That would be mine. I do this running my finger around the plate thing and licking the finger when all I want to do is pick the plate up and lick it.
I think it feels respectful rather than rough. It’s something I do at home. I will pick up the bowl and slurp every last bit out of it, the milk after the cereal. I think that it’s controversial, but I don’t think it needs to be. I don’t think there’s a culture where licking the plate is seen as good.
Catch Nurse Georgie Carroll on tour across the UK until 01 November – very few tickets remain here
