Tab Tries Dining With CowsDrinkMilk

BEN DALTON is hungry enough to call upon CowsDrinkMilk to make him Thai Green Curry. The results are delicious in more ways than one.

ADC Cambridge university feminism comedy club CowsDrinkMilk Footlights interview late show sketch comedy sketch show

When CowsDrinkMilk fancied a chat with Tab last week, they found us wanting (food). At Tab’s request that CowsDrinkMilk arrive with green curry paste, coconut milk, rice, four onions and two leeks, they jumped in “Hurrah!” and arrived, sharp, at Fitzwilliam’s North Plodge at 7:35.

CowsDrinkMilk’s real names are Pete, Russel, Chloe and Nisha (not Nietzsche). They come dressed in a variety of clothes, shake our hands with a variety of different grips (medium to vice) and all without exception request a drink of alcohol before we sit down for a talk and a cook.

The conversation during our Thai Green Curry (click here for Leaf Arbuthnot’s recipe) begins, as one might expect with an ADC late show, comedically. It later moves into the slightly more straight-faced territory of human rights and Miley Cyrus.

Let us begin with the basics.

Do cows drink their own milk?

Pete: Of course they do! I am angry that people think they don’t!

Tell us a bit about the show…

Pete: There are some infant mortality jokes.

Chloe: There are about 15 sketches.

Nisha: Some are funny. Some aren’t.

Russel: The concept is ‘funny’. But there is no ‘concept’ to be funny. We are deliberately avoiding an overarching plot. There’s been a lot of overarching plots recently – we wanted to depart from that.

Are you it? Is it just you four?

Russel: There are some others… and a couple of dancing girls, but I don’t want to mention those.

You seem very close… how did you find each other?

Russel: When I did my first show with Pete, we hated each other.

Pete: Russel was disembowelled.

Russel: Pete was going to be a doctor… We did an Edinburgh show together. There’s also Olly, who co-wrote the show with us. He’s at UCL doing a PHD on online geek communities.

The gang in their poster…

How easy is it to put on a sketch show at the ADC? Could The Tab do it?

Chloe: You just apply to the ADC – you fill in a form.

Pete: You have to have slept with the committee. Russel has a history of personal pleasure with the ADC.

At this point, the four onions are being brought up against a shockingly yellow knife. Everyone is in floods of tears. Pippa Calvin, Tab’s I.T. correspondent, enters the kitchen as if by magic. She cracks a window, and perches next to the microwave.

Do you like Catherine Tate?

Nisha: It’s not even ‘meh’! It’s bad ‘meh’!

Chloe: I think she’s quite a good actress. Some of the writing is… What Russel, Pete and Olly write does not lean towards Catherine Tate.

Russel: The problem is that she is too catchphrase based. Too ‘stock character’.

Nisha: I saw her on stage once!

Little Britain?

Pete: We don’t like little Britain either!

Chloe: What’s good about our show is that the sketches are so, so different!

Pete: I think The Simpsons is the best comedy of all time.

Russel: We’re trying to join the comedic and the artistic.

Pete: Pete Sellers is also so good. He’s so perfect – not just talented, also works really, really hard.

Bridesmaids?

Pete: Best comedy written in recent years

Nisha: I hate it! Mean girls is good though: “God created the rifle, to kill the dinosaurs, and the homosexuals”! I hate the poo scene in Bridesmaids. I think it’s kind of boring. The only scene I laughed at is where she’s pretending to be drunk in the car. I hate comedy that’s inherently about women fighting.

I.T. Consultant Pippa: Oh my God, I love the bit where the colonial woman on the wing is churning butter!

At this point a girl arrives in the kitchen to tell us that The Great British Bake-off Finale is on. The conversation now takes a serious turn.

How do you feel about love?

Nisha: I referred to sex as “the sex” just now… That’s how long it’s been. I’m either at The All Girls College or the ADC. Neither are a place for wooing, let’s be honest.

But what about the Murray Edwards fire drill, when the boys emerge from the woodwork?

Nisha: Oh yeah that’s really cute.

Why do boys come to Murry Edwards?

Nisha: Scrabble.

Russel: 50 percent are there for Nisha. My mum read the tab the other day.

How do you all feel about recycling?

Chloe: There was a cast conflict about recycling.

Pete: All I could do was hide in the corner.

Chloe: Basically, one member of the cast prioritizes recycling over female rights.

Russel: All male members of the cast looked at their shoes.

The fateful onions in progress…

Miley Cyrus?

Nisha: I had a lot more issues with Robin Thicke. He knew everything that was going to happen.

Russel: Women feel the need to do things like this to get famous, in the way that men don’t.

Chloe: Are you saying that the problem stems from women?

At this point, smelling a fire (both ethical and curry), the Fitzwilliam Women’s Officer enters the kitchen. She pours The Tab a glass of wine.

How do you make sure that the women in the cast aren’t objectified?

NIsha and Chloe: None of us take this shit.

Russel: I do not give any shit.

Chloe: I play more men in the show than women.

Pete: Women in comedy shouldn’t just be the romantic interest.

Women’s Officer Rachel: Are there any dialogues in your play between two women that aren’t about men or periods?

Chloe: Yeah!

Nisha: Actually no, we just cut it!

Chloe: Actually they discuss houses, estate agents, irony. Gay sacrifice.

It is at this point recalled that Women’s Officer Rachel was singing the suffragette song from Mary Poppins around R block just yesterday.

Chloe: I think that current feminism is a discourse dominated by white middle class intellectuals! It is a problem. Gender politics should find a way to reach out to other social issues.

Nisha: It’s half the population! People can’t say « Why are we still saying gender politics, why does it exist ? » because it does!

Women’s Officer Rachel: Feminism has been watered down in the media… it’s not enough to say “I beleive in gender equality”.

Leaf: What about the Lola Lo Down when that boy screamed “I like it when she’s in gaffer tape!” My initial reaction was THAT’S TERRIBLE, but my second reaction was to chill out!

The conversation now turns to bestiality. The Tab recalls the girl it used to know who gave a dog a handjob in a park but was disappointed to learn that she couldn’t get it hard. If the dog had had an erection, would this have been consensual? Nisha changes tack slightly…

Nisha: I find people that eat dogs unacceptable

Leaf: I think this is just culture.

Final question: what would you like us to ask you?

All: Let’s answer that cliché-ed question about which superpowers we’d all have…

Chloe: I would fly underneath the water and be able to breath.

Pete: It would be quite cool to teleport. I would get there always before commercial flights.

Nisha: I would be able to eat everything without getting fat or being sick…

If you could do any activity without getting out of breath, which one would it be?

Leaf : Surely that’s obvious…

Nisha: No! You have to get tired after sex for it to feel good!

Leaf: I would like to sing sublimely without getting out of breath.

 

CowsDrinkMilk runs from Wednesday 30 October to Saturday 2 November 2013 at 11.00pm.

If you would like to talk to The Tab, and don’t mind cooking us a delicious evening meal in the process, get in touch with us at [email protected].