One non blonde

Jocelyn Jee Esien is often referred to as the first black woman to have her own sketch show on television, in the UK and the US.

She once said to The Independent, in a 2006 interview: “No one can think of anyone else [...] Oprah never had her own sketch show... neither did Whoopi.”

In another interview with the Guardian UK, she refers to the phenomenon as “ridiculous but very exciting”. But threatens “… if another black girl pops up and says, ‘actually, I did one first’, I’ll push her down the stairs”.

Serendipity

Born in Hackney, London, to Nigerian parents in 1979, Jocelyn never planned to become a comedian; instead she wanted to become an actress. She attended the Guildhall School of Drama and was a successful actress for several years though not in the comedy genre.

She ventured into comedy in 1997 after she was persuaded by a friend to appear at a stand-up comedy talent show. “I just loved it,” she says of her first time as a stand-up comic.

She first became popular as one of the stars of 3 Non Blondes, a hidden camera comedy show, which featured three women playing a range of comical characters to an unsuspecting public.

The show, aired on the BBC in 2003, was produced by Gary Reich, the man behind Da Ali G Show which starred Sacha Baron Cohen of Borat fame. After a successful run on the show, Jocelyn got her own show also on the BBC.

Little Miss Jocelyn was initially meant to follow the same format as 3 Non Blondes and Da Ali G Show and be either a hidden camera sitcom or talk-show but Esien wanted something different, something more traditional.

Little Miss Jocelyn

Also produced by Reich, it was basically a comedy sketch show, which sometimes incorporated a hidden camera and Esien was both star and writer. Characters on the show were usually outlandish and drawn from her Black-British background.

They included Fiona, the office worker who tries to conceal the fact that she is black from her mostly white colleagues; Gladys Kingston, a Jamaican divorcee who hates men of all ages and is prone to cussing at inappropriate times and places; and Ignatius, an inept Nigerian driving instructor who claims to have entered the UK without a visa and is eager to train his 10-year-old son in the family trade.

“The characters all came from Jocelyn,” says Reich. “She has all these voices in her head.”

In playing her characters, Esien tries out a range of varying accents from posh upper-middle class accents to thick Southern-Nigerian accents.

When asked about her target audience for the show she replied: “I wanted everybody!” The show was dubbed “the black Little Britain” (one of the UK’s most successful sketch shows) to which she said: “It’s a great honour but I can’t see it.”

The show first came on air in 2006 and its first series was nominated for a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award for “Best Comedy Programme”.

However, in 2008, after its second series, the British Comedy Guide web site named it the “Worst British TV Sketch Show” of 2008, based on a poll they conducted.

Honour thy father and mother

As a stand-up comic, she goes by her first two names Jocelyn Jee. Her routines interspersed with strong language are filled with such “lady-like” things as thrush and high heels.

During a show in South Africa, she performed a hilarious imitation of her mother in a thick Nigerian accent, making fun of her mom’s tendency to leave long messages on the answering machine. She calls her mom and dad hilarious and credits them as the people who can always put a smile on her face.

She seems an affable person off camera and out-of-character. There is a YouTube clip of her put up by a fan who catches her on the train and she proceeds to do an impromptu improv when asked to, all the while laughing gamely.

Some YouTube clips of both her shows have received as many as 300,000 views each. Apart from the honour of being known in the history of British and American Television as the first black woman to have been given her own solo comedy sketch show, Jocely Jee has some awards to her name.

She won the “Best Newcomer” award at the Black International Comedy Awards in 2002 and a New Talent Award in the Women in Film and Television Awards, 2006.

On June 11, 2009 it was stated that Little Miss Jocelyn will not be brought back for a third series.

However, in some positive news, Esien is set to star in dance movie Street Dance 3D, in which a dance crew is forced to work with ballet dancers from the Royal Dance School in exchange for rehearsal space to win the Street Dance Championships.

Additional information culled from Wikipedia, Guardian.co.uk, The Independent, IMDb.com, youtube.