Comedian & writer Maisie Adam is currently zig-zagging the country with new show Appraisal, stopping off at three Midlands venues along the way. We recently caught up with the So You Think You’re Funny award winner to chat about her new show...

Let's get the hair out of the way quickly. It's now blonde and longer at the back, where you previously shaved it.
It's strange. I was getting quite a lot of tweets saying 'love the new hair' when I was on the Last Leg in March. But I dyed it blonde last summer for the Women's World Cup. I guess a lot of telly stuff I've filmed since then hasn't gone out yet, so this was probably the first time that people would see this hair.
And not to sound like a little old man, but I've been growing it out the back; it's too cold to have my head exposed when I'm walking back from gigs. I fancied a change. A lot of people thought I'd gone blonde for the Barbie film, which was annoying, as it was actually doing it like Paul Gascoigne! 

Are you keeping it like this for the tour?
I better had - I've had my photos done now!

Why is your show called Appraisal?
I'm now in my fifth year of being able to say that this is my job, and the title came from a conversation with a friend who said that normally, when anybody in his company has been there for five years, they come in for an appraisal. That doesn't really exist in comedy, but maybe this tour is that. Each night you're going in for a meeting with people who are going to sit the other side from you and let you know how you're doing. Hopefully the audience will be impressed and I'll keep my job.

Tell us about the pre-tour warm-ups...
You've got ideas in your notepad, and you don't really know how they're all going to form together. But I really like work-in-progress shows for that reason, because you can share a little secret with the audience like 'I think I've got an idea, and I want to know if I'm barking up the wrong tree.' I like that vulnerability. It gives you a different thrill to the one you get when you're out on tour, where you're like, 'I think I've got a brilliant show and I want you to hear it.' 

Is there a theme?
It's about everything that's been going on for me in the last couple of years. I got married in June 2023, then played Soccer Aid at Old Trafford the next day. That's a weekend that I don't think many people will be able to say they've had. Then, three days later, you're trying out jokes in a room above a pub, and a day after that you're hosting the UK Mattress Awards. Sometimes you have to stop and go 'What on earth is happening here?' 

Do you feel under more pressure with your second tour?
With the first big tour there are no expectations, whereas perhaps there are with this one. People might come expecting me to talk about certain things, so it's a puzzle that you've got to work out - which, again, is why the work-in-progress is really fun; I enjoy trying to work out that puzzle.

Who would you say your typical fans are? 
Before my first tour, I'd been tour support for bigger comedians like Jason Manford, Josh Widdicombe and John Bishop, and one of the things I clocked was how different every comic's audience is. So I was nervous but really excited to see what my crowd was going to be like. Was it going to be people who heard me talk about women's football on Radio Four, or people who like the woman with the weird hair on Mock The Week? I guess now it's those same things plus a new specific audience from the Big Kick Energy podcast.

Big Kick Energy, with Suzi Ruffell, has been a big hit. How did that come about?
When the Women's World Cup was on, there was no comedy entertainment show about football. It's the fastest-growing sport in the world, and it felt like all of the talk around it was clinical and technical, which doesn't do much for new fans. I thought I'd do a podcast about ‘what if I knew somebody who was enthusiastic but doesn't know the ins and outs’. And that's Suzi. We came up with this idea that I could get Suzi into football during the World Cup, and afterwards we got loads of messages going 'please continue it'. So we carried on and within eight months won Sports Podcast Of The Year at the Broadcast Sport Awards.

Do you still play for the football team you talked about in your first touring show?
Yes, the Brighton Seagals. I love it. Last week I was filming QI and they got me a car home, but I asked for the car to take me straight to training. I got changed as soon as we'd finished filming. The driver dropped me off, and I was in a full face of make-up, which was running everywhere by the end of the training session.

What are the best and worst things about touring?
The best thing is getting the opportunity to gig to a roomful of different people every single night. You can't walk into a theatre in Guildford expecting to do what you did in a comedy club in Cardiff. It's going to be two completely different gigs with two completely different audiences... The worst thing is travelling on your own. You do start to feel a bit ‘Alan Partridge’ staying in hotel rooms. I went through my phone camera recently and it was just pictures of hotel-room doors with the numbers on; you'd be away for seven nights in a row, you’d get to the hotel, and suddenly you’re thinking 'What number room am I in? That's how I remember the room numbers. But if that's the shittiest part of touring, it's pretty good. 

Maisie Adam brings her Appraisal tour to Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury, on Friday 4 October; Birmingham Town Hall (part of the Birmingham Comedy Festival) on Tuesday 8 October; and Royal Spa Centre, Leamington, on Saturday 2 November