Clune, Jackie 1965(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born, c. 1965; partner of Richard Hannant (an actor); children: Saoirse, Thady, Frank, Orla. Education: Attended Kent University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England.

CAREER:

Writer, playwright, singer, comedian, actor, radio broadcaster. Royal Holloway College, former lecturer. Red Rag Women's Theatre Company, cofounder and former troop member; performed at Hackney Empire, Hackney, England. Television performer, including Comedy Nation, Smack the Pony, Eastenders, and Staying in Show. Performer in Julie Burchill Is Away, one-woman show, 2002, and Sing-a-Long-A Sound of Music, touring show.

WRITINGS:

Extreme Motherhood: The Triplet Diaries, Macmillan (London, England), 2006.

Man of the Month Club (novel), Putnam (New York, NY), 2006.

Also author of stand-up comedy shows, including Showstopper, Chicks with Flicks, It's Jackie, and Follow the Star!

SIDELIGHTS:

British stand-up comedian Jackie Clune lived a lesbian life for a dozen years, performing one-woman shows throughout the United Kingdom and acting on popular British television shows such as the Eastenders. Her lesbianism was grist for her stand-up routines; it also formed the basis for most of her relationships. As she wrote on the Guardian Online: "In February 1988, I decided to become a lesbian. For the next 12 years I had relationships with women exclusively. Then, in October 2000, I decided to ‘go back in’ and went straight. The reasons for both these decisions have by turns appalled, fascinated and challenged almost everyone in my life, from my parents, friends and enemies to the loyal lesbian fan base I had built up during my career as a cabaret artist and comedian." Clune's decision to form a heterosexual relationship led to a romance with an actor, and then to the birth of a daughter and quickly thereafter to the birth of triplets. Clune recounts the joys as well as the tribulations of her new maternal state in the 2006 Extreme Motherhood: The Triplet Diaries.

Clune also became a novelist with her 2006 publication, Man of the Month Club, the tale of a thirty-nine-year-old woman and her attempts to start a family before her biological clock runs out. Amy Stokes operates a fashionable baby boutique in London and wonders if she will ever find the time or maturity to plunge into motherhood, especially in the absence of any father on the horizon. When circumstances convince her to take the plunge, she decides initially to meet with a different handsome man each month at her time of ovulation. Her plans do not always go smoothly, but finally she meets not only the right father, but also the right partner. A Kirkus Reviews critic was not overwhelmed with this chick-lit novel, terming it a "sarcastic, forced debut," as well as "a mildly entertaining read, with a dollop of British appeal." However, Stephanie Schneider, writing on the Romantic Times Online, had a higher assessment of Man of the Month Club, finding it a "witty and bold tale [that] cuts deep into the hilarity of what the dating world can be like."