Jessica Fostekew snatches her first Radio 4 series, Sturdy Girl Club
- Jessica Fostekew is making her first Radio 4 series, Sturdy Girl Club
- The four-part comedy will see the comic performing stand-up and interviewing some of the strongest women in the world
- "I want to raise the profile of all the flavours of weightlifting for women by showing it off" she said
Jessica Fostekew has landed her debut Radio 4 series, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
The comic is making Sturdy Girl Club, a four-part stand-up show about weightlifting, gender and big, strong women.
Speaking to some of the world's strongest women for the series, Fostekew, who was Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated for her 2019 Fringe show Hench, about her pregnancy, embracing her strength and newfound devotion to lifting weights, which was adapted into the Radio 4 special Powerhouse last year, will be "exploring the spicy minefield that is muscularity vs femininity".
Sturdy Girl Club's 14-minute episodes will air early next year. Fostekew told British Comedy Guide: "I'm over the moon to be making a show about strong women. The strongest women, actually. I'm going to talk to some of the strongest women in the world. And if I get my way I want them to each show me their skills and then I will have a go.
"I want to raise the profile of all the flavours of weightlifting for women by showing it off, making a twit out of myself and shouting about how obscene it is that most of the strongest women in the universe still have full-time day jobs because of how hard sponsors find it to hold up big women as icons."
The comic, who is returning to the Edinburgh Fringe this year with Wench, also guest stars as an interfering traffic warden in the podcast sitcom Positive Soup, which launches on 15th April. Also featuring James Acaster and Jon Culshaw, the comedy is about the three worst people in the world to preach about positivity, being present and not putting pressure on yourself attempting to make a 'feel good' podcast. Written by Nathalie Antonia (Have I Got News For You) and Alice Etches (Never Mind The Buzzcocks), it stars the pair with Sydney Stevenson (My Family).
Sturdy Girl Club is produced by Lyndsay Fenner (The News Quiz, The Now Show) for Mighty Bunny Productions, the production company she recently founded with former Just A Minute producer Victoria Lloyd. Mighty Bunny is also currently making the Cornish sketch show Wasson Cornwall? for Radio 4, of which more details can be found here, and The Ministry Of Happiness, a two-part narrative farce written by Gareth Gwynn (Tourist Trap, The Coopers Versus The Rest) for BBC Radio Wales.
Marking the centenary of the first public radio broadcast in Wales, the "genuinely true but in parts absolutely unbelievable story" about the early days of 5WA - the Welsh wing of the (then) British Broadcasting Company, the two 28-minute episodes will feature "naked orchestra members, drunk station managers and a studio full of eggs. Plus one or two bits we'll have to make-up, just so it sounds believable".