Funny Mummy tackles parenting - Shoreham show

She’s promising a hilarious one-woman comedy night, all about the bonkers world of parenting (Wednesday, February 21 at 8pm) – from pregnancy to playdates, from class WhatsApp groups to school runs. Alyssa’s comedy, music videos and sketches have gone viral on Netmums and Facebook; she has featured on BBC, ITV and Sky. Now comes the solo tour.

“I started off in comedy doing characters. I used to do lots of different characters because I came from an acting background. I did all sorts. I loved it but I always felt ‘Could I do comedy as me?’ so I did and I really went for it. I set up Bring Your Own Baby Comedy with my friend Carly Smallman (a show which is still going strong, playing a wide range of venues across the country). That was eight years ago, and so for the last eight years since becoming a parent I have come out of the character closet and been doing my own comedy. It has been fantastically liberating and amazing. Over those years I've built up so much material about being a mum and about being a parent and I've taken the material to so many different parents across the country.”

Now Alyssa is flying solo with a show that is certainly striking a chord: “We all want to know that parents are really just winging it and that no children come with any kind of manual whatsoever. You think that everybody else is getting right, and I have spoken to so many mums who think that. And so for this show I have put together all the comedy material that I've gathered from being a mum for nine years and just put it into one show. It has got funny songs in it and funny stories. It’s my first tour. I've been performing in a few theatres local to me but I have been signed up by a lovely company who are now taking my show out on tour. My daughter is very sweet and she is very supportive. She wrote me a lovely little note before the tour saying that she was proud of me which was lovely.”

Part of the challenge of parenting, of course, is that it is changing all the time: “I'm now very much in the school-mum era. I've got a whole section on the school class WhatsApp group and the PTA. Every phase is a different phase when you're a parent and each phase brings completely different challenges and surprises.” And it is a show with a message: “There is no set way of being a parent. We are all doing our best. I think you have just got to try to have a laugh about it. It is really important to have a sense of humour and to realise that none of us really knows what we're doing. You meet people who think they've got it all figured but they probably haven't.

"I've got a song called Smug Mum that I do. I am very, very supportive of everyone shining their own light and celebrating their parenting wins but when other parents make you feel that you've got it wrong and that they've got it right, that's my big bugbear. I'm talking about when you send a video of your baby sitting up and a mother sends you back a video of their baby running a half-marathon! But really the show is a big pat on the back to parents saying we're all doing our best, we're all in the same boat and we're all getting there.”