Urzila Carlson: A life well laughed

Our celebrated comedienne and author has a lot going on in her life, but she’ll always find the funny.

- JUDY BAILEY

Urzila Carlson’s running late. She sends me a text from her Uber: “I’m on my way, so have mercy if I’m late, please.” She arrives on the doorstep a short time later in a flurry. “I thought, ‘I’ll have time to drop the kids off to school and daycare, then go home, get the dishes done and clean up,’ then I come to get in the car and … flat tyre.”

Isn’t that just the way all working mums operate? We all try to cram just one extra thing in and our best-laid plans come unstuck by the unforeseen.

Urzila has two children, a daughter and son, with her wife Julie. She guards their privacy fiercely. Right now, she’s operating in that window between their school drop-offs and pick-ups.

What I love about Urzila is that we chat for so long that when she gets home, she has no time to wait for an AA guy to come and fix the tyre, so she fixes it herself and sends me a triumphant pic to prove it.

She’s down-to-earth, thoughtful and kind, and she’s one of our most successful comics. She fills houses in London, Edinburgh and the US. They lap her up in Australia – so much so that in 2019, she became the highest-selling comedian in the 33-year run of the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Meanwhile, Kiwi audiences know her for her stand-up shows and regular appearances on Three’s 7 Days and TVNZ 2’s Are You Paying Attention?.