Jayde Adams: ‘There’s no art without failure’

It’s a crisp, cold Sunday morning and I’m hunkered down in a deep armchair in Jayde Adams’ familial house in South Bristol. Her mum, Gail, is preparing a Sunday roast in the kitchen and her dad is doing DIY.

Underneath the staircase there’s an array of framed photos of Jayde and her sister, Jenna, clad in fluorescent catsuits embellished with crystals. “Sexy, aren’t I? I’m 12 there,” she says, and winks.

Completely candid and outrageously funny, Jayde’s been in training for a lifestyle in the limelight ever since she was a child and entered freestyle disco-dancing competitions with Jenna, who was two years older than her.

Jayde is currently three weeks into the filming of her new sitcom, Ruby Speaking, has just returned from a gig at Butlin’s Bognor Regis and is gearing up for her new standup tour, Men I Can Save You, starting in March.

It’s a frantic schedule for the actor, comedian and TV host, but I manage to catch her on a rare off-morning. I feel bad, crashing her break in her parents’ house, which they bought in 1978 “for a Twix and a hand job” – but she seems used to a hectic lifestyle.

Jayde and Jenna Adams in 1997 – photo: Jayde Adams

In 2023, the 38-year-old will tour her comedy show, appear in the film version of the Take That musical, return to her role in award-winning sitcom Alma’s Not Normal and star in Ruby Speaking.

That’s after charming the nation in Strictly Come Dancing in 2021, playing a bruising matriarch in Hartcliffe-set film The Fence, a comedy tour and hosting a podcast about neighbourhood Facebook groups. It’s a list that could make you feel tired just reading it.

“I’m exhausted, but it’s amazing,” she admits, gulping a swig of coffee.

Her latest show, Men I Can Save You, coming to Bristol Old Vic in March, plays into the current conversation in comedy: what, if anything, is off limits?

“It’s quite difficult to decide what jokes to make nowadays,” Jayde muses, “because so many people get upset.” “So I’ve chosen a subject that no one gives a shit about: men.”

The tour explores her take on men losing power and how she can help them deal with it. In it, she is dressed as Jesus in all-white and swerves from how she plans to save modern men from redundancy to tackling her own saviour complex.

It comes after her previous show Serious Black Jumper, in which she skewers the hypocrisies in fourth-wave feminism.

“We haven’t seen working-class feminism since the Spice Girls,” she laments.

It was her newly single status that allowed her to write about finding herself in Men I Can Save You, realising “there’s a lot more to life than blokes”.

“We haven’t seen working-class feminism since the Spice Girls” – photo: HungerTV

On her return to south Bristol, where she has recently bought a house, the former fishmonger at ASDA Bedminster promises Ruby Speaking “won’t have one single bit of Clifton in it”, “no Suspension Bridge, no Clifton colourful houses, it’s all south Bristol”.

The ITV2 sitcom, due to air in 2023, is based on her previous line of work in a Stokes Croft call centre. It’s filled to the brim with Bristolians, from Joe Sims to Bristol Old Vic Theatre School’s Kiera Lester and new kid on the block Dan Hiscox – a Wetherspoons chef she found at a casting call that made her feel like “like Simon Cowell when Paul Potts walked on stage”.

Jayde believes that new and diverse voices are key in TV and comedy, and is something she is pushing for, “by hook or by crook”, in Ruby Speaking.

She said: “There’s a real Bristol vibe and that is so important, especially in the face of the toxic entertainment industry.”

“I did a speech on the first day to everyone which was this is an open door policy and if any of you are feeling at all like anything’s not working, you can come and speak to me.”

“Why not let this be an environment where people from all backgrounds can flourish creatively rather than breed fear into people?”

Despite her confidence, with her stating matter-of-factly “I know I’m great”, as a working-class woman, Jayde feels that she is treated differently in comedy.

Jayde with the case of her new sitcom, Ruby Speaking – photo: Jayde Adams Twitter.

“I don’t get away with a lot of stuff other people get away with,” she says. “I don’t have the privilege to be able to be anything other than happy to be where I am.

“I don’t get what the others get because I’m not related to anyone in the industry, I didn’t go to Cambridge and I don’t come from vast sums of money.

“I’m very aware that as soon as I do anything, someone somewhere is going to try and take it away from me. And it will be easier to take it away from me because I have an accent, I swear a lot and I’m fat.”

But, doggedly determined, Jayde’s story is one of survival. From Twitter trolling and darker, extreme online abuse to losing Jenna to a brain tumour in 2011, she says: “I have learnt to dust myself off again and again.”

Where does that resilience come from? “Learning from my experiences,” Jayde says, after a pause.

“Trying not to make the same mistake twice, not feeling guilty and realising there’s no art without failure – I think that’s it.”

This is an unedited version of the article that originally appeared in Bristol24/7’s quarterly magazine

Bristol24/7’s spring 2023 magazine is being distributed to pick up free across our city

Main photo: HungerTV/Jayde Adams/Jordan Rossi

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