Episode 90: Hannah Chambers

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Hannah Chambers has spent 25 years in the comedy management business looking after many famous comedians including Jimmy Carr, Sarah Millican, Joe Lycett and Aisling Bea.

As she explains, she has given up her Monday to Friday fully for her job, and in fact it's not unusual for her to work 14 hour days, often spending evenings watching stand up shows or TV recordings that her clients are appearing in. She loves her job and says she's a bit like a Jewish mother to her clients: pushy, but wanting them to eat properly too!

We met at The Garden Cinema near Holborn - which houses her offices but is also a newly-opened cinema, designed and built just before lockdown by her Dad.

We recorded our chat in Screen 1, with plush red velvet seats in front of us and a lovely heavy cinema curtain behind us.

Hannah has been on my radar for a long time as my best friend Maria worked with her husband Jeremy, and I have always admired their decision for Hannah to carry on her more-than-full-time job when she became a mum, while Jeremy took on the role of primary carer.

Hannah is always quick to tell people about this and is refreshingly unapologetic about it - as she is about everything!

I loved Hannah’s sense of humour and her resilience - two things she wants to pass on to her daughters.

She told me about a photo she keeps on her phone, of her doing a deal for Jimmy Carr, from her hospital bed, 30 minutes after her first daughter Rosie was born. That probably sums her up: incredibly hard-working but with a great self-deprecating sense of humour. Her daughters recently made her laugh, predicting her tombstone would read ‘Jimmy, I’ll call you back!’

Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones

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