MIRANDA KANE – A Shocking, Hilarious Life of Secrets Revealed By Her Writing

Hello, I’m Laura Shavin, and this is The Offcuts Drawer, the show that looks inside a writer’s bottom drawer to find the bits of work they never finished, had rejected, or couldn’t quite find a home for. We bring them to life, hear the stories behind them, and learn how these random pieces of creativity pave the way to subsequent success. My guest on today’s episode is writer, comedian, and Raconteuse Miranda Kane. She’s performed her one-woman shows around the world and has had three seasons of the audio sitcom that she writes and stars in, Slaving Away, topping the audible charts since 2018. But before I go any further with this introduction, I should warn you that it’s not an episode that you want to listen to with younger friends or family, and it’s definitely not safe for work. Because Miranda is a very honest, funny, and forthright person, and I enjoyed this interview immensely, and she shares a lot about her life and particularly about her experience in her previous career as a plus-size sex worker. She’s also an activist for sex worker rights and the decriminalization of sex work, and does a podcast called Good Sex, Bad Sex. So there is explicit content. Funny, explicit content, but explicit content nonetheless. And if you’re uncomfortable with this kind of subject matter, then you probably want to give this one a miss. But if you’re not, this is a cracking episode. Although, like every podcast episode recorded since the pandemic, we started off talking microphones and checking audio setups because that’s now the law.

It’s great. And now we’re all doing it in our pants and underwear anyway. So we might as well just be freestyling, isn’t it? Yeah.

Okay. So you sound marvellous. There’s no problems with your audio, obviously, because you do your podcast. Presumably, you’ve got a proper setup. Are you recording from your, I’ve heard this new phrase, boffice, bedroom stroke office, although… Boffice, I know.

Wow. Well, I’m in my lounge, but unfortunately, I live right opposite a playground. So if you hear screaming children, it’s not the ones in my basement, Laura!

Thanks for the reassurance. Right, then. Well, I suppose we get started with your first offcut.

Yeah.

Can you tell us what it’s called, what genre it was written for and when it was written?

So this is a cutscene from the third series of my audio sitcom for Audible called Slaving Away, and it was written this year in the year of our Lord 2021.

Fortunately, in my work at least, I can still meet people who do know what they want, which is why I’m currently on top of hands eight inches deep.

No, no, no, no, no.

Bend my legs back and then use the strap on.

Like this?

Oh, yes, yes. No, no, no, no, no.

Maybe I spoke too soon.

It needs to be deeper.

If I bend your legs back any more, I’ll break your hips.

There is no way.

Let’s put a cushion under your arse. Get it up a bit.

What are you doing?

Trigonometry.

But I do not want this cushion.

Just trust me, I’ve done this more times than you.

Okay, I’ll let you try. Oh yes, oh yes, you know what you’re doing.

Weird that. There we go. It’s easy once you get everything in place and a nice little rhythm going. Bit like rocking a baby to sleep. If your baby was a six foot tall German with a penchant for prostate play. Oh, he might need winding. That’s it. Now we just need to bathe him and get him dressed. Almost really. Now does baby, do you want a shower?

No, I will go. This was not satisfactory for me.

Really? Well, you certainly look like you enjoyed it. Baby wipes go in the bin, by the way.

It’s your body.

My body? You mean the one I described in detail on my website along with the many pictures? OK, Hans, what seems to be the problem?

Your bum, amazing, like a shelf. This I want upon my face.

Chances of that are dwindling.

And the thighs, I love how they rub together. I want to feel them squeeze my head.

Doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon.

Your boobs, oh my god, your boobs.

Thanks, grew them myself.

But the belly, the belly I do not like.

So you like my boobs, bum and thighs, but not the thing that’s holding it all together.

Yeah.

So you basically want a Barbie doll.

No, no, no, I like the fat women.

But you do realize I have no control over where the fat goes and it was very clear in my photos where the fat is.

Yeah, I saw the photos.

But you still look surprised.

I thought you used Photoshop.

Hold the phone. You thought I used Photoshop to make myself look fatter?

Yeah, it’s a niche market, no? No.

Well, yes, but also I don’t even know where to start other than getting you two American high school teenagers a lightning storm and Kelly LeBrock.

What is this Kelly LeBrock?

Science. Look, Hans, I don’t know what to say.

No, no, no, you don’t need to apologize.

I wasn’t going to. I was in fact going to encourage you to fuck off at the earliest opportunity.

Well, I have to say, this was the most exciting scene we’ve ever recorded for this series. We’ve never had anything quite so graphic as that before. Anyway, tell us about it and why was it not used? Don’t tell me it wasn’t dirty enough.

Oh, that was so… I know it’s so bad to laugh at your own things, but that was very well played. Just the excellent right amount of anger in her voice. That’s brilliant, brilliant. So this is totally… So a lot of things in Slaving Away are based on accurate and true depictions of clients that I had when I was a sex worker. And this was exactly what happened with a guy who thought I genuinely photoshopped in more fat, and he was just really unhappy. He was like, this is not good, exactly how your man just played it. And I was writing it, and I just thought… And there was no ending. I couldn’t find a way to end it and fit it back into the script. I really love with Slaving Away, one of the things that we’ve said from the beginning was that the client scenes are like the snippet in Alan Partridge where he’s in the studio. So it’s got no bearing on the story. The real story is what’s happening in the travel lodge. And these vignettes that are happening in her bedroom have no bearing on the story. But one of the things is that I like to have it, give it a satisfactory ending. And this one, I was just writing because I was really peeved at the guy. I just remembered what he said and I was just really angry. I was just like, oh, I can’t figure out how to end it properly.

I thought you ended it quite well, actually. That sounds like a punchline to me. But before we go any further, although obviously I know the series, but just to a listener who isn’t necessarily familiar with it, we’ve rather chucked them in the deep end. And in fact, I probably should have warned them. I might have to add a postscript before we record this. Before I play this, please note there is strong language and sexual content in this right from the start. So you might want to make sure there are no young children around or indeed your boss. So yes, we probably ought to explain that we, well, you, if you don’t mind, explain what Slaving Away is.

Slaving Away is an audio sitcom that I was very honored to be able to write for Audible. And it’s based on my years as a sex worker. So I was a sex worker, I was a plus size sex worker in London for 10 years before going into comedy and being able to talk about it and laugh about it. And yes, we’ve just released our third series. It’s very not safe for work. And that is one of the joys. Like for me, one of the reasons why I wanted to write it and why I do write a lot about sex work is because I don’t feel like we get the real depictions on television and on media. Everyone either thinks that we’re victims of abuse or we’re high class escorts. And this is very much just it’s an average ordinary woman trying to do an extraordinary job, but in a very ordinary, ordinary way. And we take it to pantomime levels of, you know, stupidity and storyline. And we talk about decriminalization and sex worker rights. So it’s a bit of a wild roller coaster ride, but it is also very naughty. Yes.

It’s interesting that, well, I suppose it’s good that it’s audio only because it does mean you can describe all kinds of things without either making the audience shockingly or making them want to be a little bit ill, depending on what it is they’re seeing, or being absolutely presumably pornographic and possibly quite arousing, God forbid. So was it your idea, the audio thing? How did that come about?

So we were a friend of mine, a friend of mine, Nick Minter. So he worked with John Holmes, friend of your show, John Holmes. And they ran an audio production company. And I was I was friends with Nick for years. We used to work together in a radio station before I was even doing sex work. So we’ve just known each other for years and years and years. And I started doing sex work on the side, kept it a total secret from him. And then like 10 years later, I’m like, yes, I’m doing a show as part of the Camden Fringe, but you might want to brace yourself. And I literally came out to all my friends doing this one woman show. You’re kidding.

That’s how you told everybody.

Yeah.

On stage. Yeah.

So some of them knew. And then people like Nick, who were kind of not more work, like we were friends, but it just never comes up in conversation, Laura.

Crazy, isn’t it? Would you like another cup of coffee? By the way, that thing you’re stirring your sugar with is in fact, no, never mind. Now I can see that would be a problem.

Here’s why I had plenty of time to go to the pub and lots of disposable income.

You’re not an heiress.

Exactly.

I live with a flatmate in East Finchley.

East Finchley, it’s very, very suburban and very unglamorous a name for a place where Dominatrix lives. Dominatrix from East Finchley. Oh yes, N2.

Thank you very much. Someone once said that they were like, why is it in East Finchley? That’s not exactly the hub of sex and sexuality. And I’m like, we are everywhere.

And actually, I grew up near East Finchley and let me tell you, there was quite a lot of sex and sexuality going on in those days. I can’t vouch for it now. I’m not there now. Oh yes, there were things going on behind Twitching Net curtains in N2.

Brilliant, brilliant.

So Nick was in the audience when you went, ladies and gentlemen, I’m in fact Dominatrix.

Yes, yes. And then stood there for an hour and pretty much told everyone about it. It was a very rough cut show. It was more just like I’m just standing on stage chatting to people. And for years, like ages and ages and ages, I was like, Nick, I’ve had 10 years of working as a sex worker, you work in radio. And I’ve always loved radio. It’s always been my passion. I grew up listening to Radio 4 and, you know, I’m a massive fan of The Now Show and all of these things. And I begged him to do something surrounding sex work. And he just completely ignored me. And I still haven’t forgiven him about it. And then one day he gets a thing from Audible and they’re running a competition and they want to make six pilots. And then it goes to an audience vote of which one gets a series. And he said, right, well, let’s do something about sex work. Let’s do, you know, we sat down in the pub, had a great brainstorm about it, talked about it. And it was just something from day one that we wanted to make into a series. And we had enough, like, material talking about it, because fortunately with him, like, I could sit down and write, because I would get caught up in my own brain straight away. And Nick would just be like, I just want to know what would happen if someone turned up and they looked underage, would you ask for ID? And I was like, oh, my God, that reminds me of when someone, I did have to ask for ID. So it was all these lovely bouncing off points. And he was like, what about anyone super religious? And I was like, yeah, there was a guy who turned up in a full rabbi outfit. Yes.

Was he actually a rabbi or he just wanted to disguise himself or it was part of the fantasy?

It was the full Hasidic Jew thing. And he was, I think he was Jewish, like, you know, there was no fantasy there.

Well, you could probably half tell, couldn’t you?

They were.

But he wasn’t sort of going, call me rabbi.

No, nothing like that. And the cheek of it was like when he was phoning up for an appointment and like texting beforehand to confirm, every time he would always say, oh, you are discreet, aren’t you? Are you discreet? Is it discreet location? Is it really, is it discreet? As if like, yeah, it’s East Finch, like if I’d have a neon sign saying, sexy in the middle of East Finchley. And then that bugger turns up in full gear like that. Like, thanks. Thanks for the discretion. Yeah, brilliant.

Well, sorry, I don’t understand that. What do you think? A Hasidic Jew turning up at your flat. What message does that send to the general sort of area? I don’t want people to think I have religious men married to my house. What’s the nature of his indiscretion there?

It’s not that. It’s just that, you know, my neighbors saw me and my gay flatmate and we were in our early 20s. We used to go and get pissed down the weather spoons every Friday night. So I think they’d just be more worried about us and wondering whether we were changing our party ways. Converting to Judaism.

So he didn’t become a regular. I shouldn’t be asking these questions. I’m just curious because I’m a nice Jewish girl. And he’s finch. I might even know him.

It’s more than welcome to turn up, but just don’t be hypocritical and keep asking me whether I’m the one that’s discreet.

That’s all. Have I dug myself a hole? No, I’m not sure. No, no, no. I’m making notes here. This is very interesting. Now, I wanted to ask you anywhere. I’m not sure if this relates properly to writing, and I probably should, you know, I should probably stick to the writing thing, but I’m just too curious as a white-bred middle class sort of uptight woman. So this is all new to me. I would like to know when, how did you learn the technical aspects of the job? You know, when you get specific requests, because you’re not, it’s not just vanilla sex, from what I understand it is. And also from the scene we’ve just heard, it’s very, presumably there’s a lot of different moves and a lot of different terms. How did you learn about them and how to do them safely and hygienically?

So I was on the kink scene for a while anyway. So there was a lot of, you know, if you’re looking for equipment, there were things like the London Alternative Market and the Fetish Fair you can go to. And a lot of those places would have demonstrations. So that’s where you’d learn to use impact toys and impact play safely. Then there’s also the great internet. You know, there’s a lot you can learn. And also being a plus size woman, there were specific plus size places where I could go to, where if I had a question about using my body in certain ways, then a lot of people could help me with that. And the internet really, and also just experience. I often, you know, it’s all very Derren Brown, like what I’m about to do is a mixture of showmanship experience and…

Sorry, you didn’t say that at the time.

Sometimes.

That was your intro. Hello, what I am about to do.

That was, you know, that was a very specific kink. But it is just an experience, an intuition. That’s the other one, intuition. So you do get an idea. And also there’s a wonderful thing, kind of trick that I learnt, which was, so if I had a client who wanted a very specific fetish, I’d learn from him. So say you’re talking about foot fetishism. So some guys, they just want to kiss your feet. Some guys want to get a bit more intimate with them. And on the phone, I’d be like, okay, well, you just tell me what you want to do and that’s fine. And then I’d see what they were doing. And then the next day someone said, oh, I’d like a foot fetish. I’d do what the guy did the day before.

Do you mean something like this perhaps?

Exactly. Oh, this old trick. I just learned from someone an hour ago. So yeah, it’s kind of a mixture of just talking to people and finding out like, you know, you get the time on the phone. When they book an appointment, you get a time on the phone to ask them what they want. So it’s not just that you have to sit on a mountaintop in Thailand and study the Kama Sutra for three years. You can’t just say, right, what do you want and how do you want me to do it? And then, yeah, when there’s things like safety things at play, then there are things you can watch on YouTube and people you can ask. And like I said, like demonstrations at loads of kink events that you can watch and ask questions at.

OK, the reason I asked a question, I thought it might lead to a, well, there’s a course you can do or a handbook you can read. But no, OK, fair enough, because I mean, your answer makes more sense, to be honest. So, yeah, we’ll move on from there then. OK, well, let’s get on to your next offcut. Tell us about this one.

So this is from 2007 and it’s a clip from my diary.

Letters to Jon Snow. May 15th, 2007 at 11.39am. A few weeks ago, we placed a competition in a well-known women’s magazine. The entrants were to write their names and addresses on the back of a postcard and send them to us. However, as we were part of a larger building, we ended up getting various pieces of mail for other departments, one of which is the Channel 4 News with that bastion of English news, Jon Snow. At first, I would duly send them back to the post room to be delivered to the correct person. However, as we have since moved, I am still getting them in the forwarded post. You would have thought the post room would have been a little more careful after two weeks of getting returned mail. But no, still, I am getting strange things meant not from my eyes. So, in a fit of defiance, I began opening them. And here’s what I found. So far, Jon Snow has had an invitation of champagne and canapes at the launch of Nancy DeLullio’s new book, one which we didn’t think he’d be too interested in, so Shaq is going to go instead. He has also had the following letter, which was photocopied. The handwriting was one I’d seen on many of the envelopes I’d sent back, so presumably he gets this one every day. I’ve just saved him the bother today. I’ve replicated the grammar and use of punctuation no matter how much I want to correct it. America. It’s the way of the dragon, not return of the dragon. It’s Fist of Fury, not the Chinese connection. It’s The Big Boss, not Fists of Fury. The movies of Bruce Lee. It is like all of your heads are upside down. Put the movies of Bruce Lee as every other country is in the world and you are all sorted. John from England. But it’s not just John Snow’s getting fan mail. This was to a younger presenter named Andrea. Dear Andrea, can you send me a signed photo as I’ve taken up the pipe and I love it. Can you sign your photo to Pipe Man Steve, please? I do recommend a pipe to all including woman. Can you send me your signed photo signed to Pipe Man Steve? Thank you so much for all your time. Yours sincerely, Steve. Not entirely sure why mentalists don’t know how to use full stops and other fun bits of punctuation, but obviously they’ve had one too many pipes to bother with it.

So, when you sent this to me, there was a little note that you wrote with it. You said, this is from my penultimate day working in an office job. The next entry stroke day was basically fuck, fuck, fuck. They have the audacity to make us all redundant and not even fire me over anything exciting to write about. So explain, tell all.

This was the job where I met Nick and it was an absolutely terrible radio station. It was a terrible idea. It was terrible music. It was all very middle of the road. We had a million pounds and the joke between our little friendship group has always been that we drunk a million pounds because we were doing our best, but nothing was happening anyway. I was the marketing assistant and as you can tell, I basically spent my whole time opening other people’s letters. And yeah, it was in the basement of the ITN building and we were just ignored. I think we had just been completely forgotten about.

So were you in at the beginning of this station?

Yeah, yeah.

Until the end?

Yeah, which was about nine months. And we had a good laugh amongst ourselves and it was, you know, really nice, but yeah, we all knew the station was going nowhere and wasn’t really anything inspirational. But I think I learned a lot about marketing.

Which was to come in useful in my subsequent career.

Exactly, transferable skills, Laura, isn’t it? And yeah, we just didn’t really, we tried, like, it’s not like, oh, we just sat and did nothing, but we just couldn’t get anywhere. So in the latter weeks, we were told basically that we’d all be made redundant. And that was the last office job I ever had.

How many office jobs did you have?

I’ve been working since I was 16, but it was all like in terrible call centres. And because I grew up in a very small town, I grew up in Dorset. And so it was the only jobs there were things like call centres. Every morning you wake up thinking, oh, God, I hope the bus crashes and I get six months in hospital. That would be dandy, you know. So we got, you know, with this one, this was my first job in London. And because I’m big and bubbly and like this on the phone and like, hi, welcome. They said, would you like to be the marketing assistant for this new radio station?

So this was the last proper job, inverted commas, that you had. So what changed between the end of this and the beginning of your sex working?

It was a sheer frustration. So I didn’t know what else I could do. So I’d gotten into this job because I’d started at the station doing work experience and I worked my bum off. I, you know, I made it really clear that I wanted a job and got to, got interviewed for the, the marketing assistant role because of that, but I get very stereotyped sometimes. I think as a larger woman, I think it’s very easy for people to think that, you know, just because you’re fat, you’re therefore lazy and stupid. So maybe that’s just my paranoia, but that always kind of works against me. And then I was living in a really terrible little, like one of those tiny shoebox flats in a HMO kind of deal and it was horrible. I wanted out and I also didn’t really have that many friends. So I started looking online, like to find a boyfriend, you know, someone I could go out with or, you know, someone I could just go out to the cinema with. I was at that stage. And that was when I kind of found this whole scene, like this whole sort of fetish scene of BBW, big, beautiful women, they called it, and plus size women. And it was all very fetishized and everything. And I was like a kid in a candy shop at first, like, I’m not going to lie, I went straight in there. I was like, this is the first time someone has said they found my body attractive. I am on it, like a carb on it. But after a while, I found that nothing was happening. There was no relationships being built. I wasn’t getting any satisfactory kind of even a friendship. And I realized that it just came down to sex. And one night I was just like, when we were being told that we were being made redundant, my redundancy package was absolutely abysmal, and I didn’t know what else I was going to do. And it was just sheer desperation of looking online to see whether there was such a thing as plus size escorts. And there was! And they were getting paid a fortune. And I was like, these women are getting paid for something that I’ve been doing for free for the past six months. And that was it. It was just like the knowledge that was going to be fired, the hatred of where I was living, the hatred of being used and knowing that I could have sex with men and I could have a great time and they could really enjoy my body and I could really enjoy having time with them. And I could get paid, I could get my rent paid, I could move out, I could use this money to do something else with my life. And yeah, it started from there. I put up a listing, like there’s different listing sites. And at the time when I started working, there was only about 12 plus size women in the whole of the UK who were working as escorts.

Wow, good odds. Exactly.

Oh my god, like it was an absolute dream. It was brilliant. And as soon as I put my details up, I got an appointment basically, someone asked me to go to an appointment and I did and I got paid. And I was over the moon.

Sorry, are they called appointments?

Yes.

That’s the official terminology.

Yeah.

That sounds like a doctor’s.

I know. Well, that’s where the psychology works there, you see, Laura, because I call it a booking or an appointment because it makes them know that they can’t turn up early and they can’t turn up late. They’ve got a one hour, two hour slot and it is like a doctor’s, you know, loads of guys are like, oh, why do I have to turn up? And it’s like, because you’ve got this time, I might be seeing someone before you or I might just be in my pants playing Super Mario Brothers. But, you know.

Yes, you’re a working woman and your time is valuable like everybody else’s.

Exactly. So, and I started doing out calls and I do it at hotels. So, I wasn’t having to go to someone’s house. I knew that I was safe in a hotel because I could call them and make sure that they were in the room that they specified. And I knew that there were people around and I have got a voice on me, you know. And also, I’ve got the type of body that it takes a big effort to cut up into little bin bags. So, they have to be really determined, you know. So, I just took advantage of that and I just started booking out calls and seeing guys and having a great time. I was 22 in London, I was going out to SoHo every night, I was making new friends, I was really, really enjoying myself.

Let’s move on to the next Offcut. So, tell us about this one, please.

So, this is a writing sample that became Crossbones and that’s a show that I wrote for Edinburgh in 2017.

The parish of St. Marie-Auverie in the year of our Lord 1163 is delighted to announce that Mrs. Crabapple of Dewsbury Lane has won this month’s Tombola and will be receiving a hamper of turnips just as soon as a hamper is invented. Regular parishioners will be aware that last weekend was our first inaugural Family Fun Day on the banks of the Thames. What a joy to see the children of Southwark making the most of poverty, their faces lit up as they made mud men, mud angels, played mud and ladders, and the classic pin the mud on the mud. However, sad to say this did not raise as much funds for the church roof as we were hoping and the parish committee have decided we take the situation firmly by the hands and shake it up until the good burghers of Southwark have discharged enough to fill a hoard. And after a lifetime of chastity, the nuns of St. Mary’s could not have been more keen to get on their knees in the service of the Lord and receive his great succor. As you all know, our newer novices have made vows to relinquish their sinful past, but we would like to assure all parishioners that we will be encouraging them to revive it again forthwith. For our more ardent sinners, Sister Mary Angela is doing great work in the vestry and guarantees all a fitful punishment at a very reasonable rate. And whilst the abbess herself has been as busy as ever, she has assured me that she will be continuing to spread herself around the missionary. However, we have found it very difficult to cater towards some requests, particularly when it involved someone going up the aisle. But we found a willing volunteer who will be available at extremely competitive rates, and so we thank Mr. Harrison for his service. As the verger of St. Mary’s, Mr. Harrison has proven time and again he knows his way around a big organ. And now let us raise our voices as we sing, Arise all ye unto the hands of the Lord.

So Crossbones, was this your first show that you did at Edinburgh?

No, this was just sort of like a brain fart writing sample. So the first show that I did for Edinburgh was The Coin Operated Girl. And that was just me, again, standing in a room talking about sex work, my life, how I started, the weird appointments. I did a top 10 at the end of what the most asked for appointments were. And it was just fun. And I did a Q&A and it was really good fun. And it was my first experience of going up to Edinburgh. It was my first experience of writing a show. And that was where I learnt more about what I wanted to do. And because I get sex workers who would come up to me afterwards and say, this is it, this is my story. I’m so tired of seeing us like either bedraggled victims or as these high class escorts. And it was like, this is it. This is what I want to do when it comes to writing about sex work. I want to talk about the average person just trying to make a living who’s not high class. They’re living with a flatmate or they’re living in a one bedroom flat. They’re just trying to get by and that’s what their money’s going towards. Because a few years into it, a friend of mine who is a sex worker activist, unfortunately, she passed away. That’s where I learned about this place called Crossbones and it’s a graveyard in Southwark. That was where the women who were prostitutes for the Bishop of Winchester were buried. They were buried in this unconsecrated scrap of ground that was laid undiscovered for years and years and years until it was discovered quite recently in the 80s. That was when I learned about the Winchester geese. They were these women that worked for the Bishop of Winchester and he prostituted them out in the stews of London on the banks of the Thames. They had these really insane laws and what a lot of sex workers would do when one of us passed away, like you get a lot of sex workers where you don’t know their real names, you don’t know where they live or anything like that. So vigils are held at crossbones at the cemetery for them. And it’s so beautiful. There’s this gate with all these ribbons flying on it and all these totems and all these names and when you hear about a sex worker dying, a lot of people will have a vigil there and they do a vigil on the 23rd of the month, every month, just for the women who were buried there. And this seemed like such a beautiful story and I wanted to write about it, but obviously I didn’t know anything about it. So the sort of parish notices is a bit of a hack. It’s a bit of a trite thing to do, but it was just a way to start with this very black adder idea of mud on the mud on the mud and then just work in the women that are being prostituted by the church. So it was just like a brain fart. And then, you know, it just made me laugh. It made me giggle a bit. And it made me realize that I did want to write about it. And I did think that I could do it in a funny, but touching way. And in a way that held significance. I always feel when I talk about sex work and when I get to write a show about sex work and I get to be funny about it, I feel like there’s a price to pay. I feel like I want to honor the women who have done it before. And for me, Crossbones was a way to do that. And so I wrote this small show. It’s only supposed to be just, I did it in a room full of 15 people every day. And that was perfect. That was all I wanted. I wanted people to come because they wanted to know the story and they wanted to know about these women. And they wanted to know about the weird laws and how that still reflects in sex work today. And just to keep it very respectful, yeah.

OK, let’s move on to your next offcut. What’s this one then?

This is a pitch document for a TV series, which I wrote in 2018 called The Archers.

The Archers, the lives, loves and melodramas in the war zone of competitive field archery. The Archers is an original comedy drama written by Miranda Kane, starring some of the UK’s best up and coming comedic talents and featuring the finest rural countryside England has to offer. It’s a deadly detectorists with murder, deadly weapons and the ongoing battle of socialism versus capitalism at its heart, but with a slight detour into live action role play. Synopsis. Charlie Saunders is the southwest area representative for the Great British Archery Association, a title she barely remembers she has after taking the mantle up years before, simply because no one else was at the meeting. However, she is woken in the middle of the night with the news that the Toll Puddle Bowman’s team Clubhouse has been set ablaze and a body has been found inside with an arrow through its heart. This starts her journey into meeting the Toll Puddle Bowman and their possibly deadly enemies, the City Compounds, in the hopes of clearing the name of the grand sport of archery. The Toll Puddles are a ragtag bunch of village oddballs headed up by the earnest Atticus Pendragon, who flies his red flag high. He is joined by Fiona, a socially awkward geek who continually tries to excuse her existence, unless she’s wearing elf ears and fighting imaginary dragons with dice. There is also Spencer, the most eccentric of the bunch, who would be happy to paint his body blue and cry havoc just to get milk from Tesco. In complete contrast, the Compounds are aloof and hard-hearted, haughty in their dislike of the village and its idiots. They’re from a nearby city and believe their fancy and expensive equipment is what archery needs to keep the riffraff out. Their leader is the impeccable Liza, meticulous, refined, and has definitely shot humans at Bilderberg group meetings. Whilst Atticus is fighting for freedom and democracy for all, Liza is subtly marking her territory and hoping this turn of events will be what she needs to take over the toll puddle shooting range for herself. In the meantime, Charlie has to keep both teams under control as well as ease the fears of the GBA, the press, the village Bobby and the community at large. Can she hit her targets or will she be left a quivering wreck?

Well done on the puns there. Excellent punnery in the last couple of lines. I have to ask why archery?

I love it. I love it. I’ve done archery for you.

You’re an archer.

I’m a secret archer.

Wow, that’s unexpected. You’re an archer.

I’m an archer. I’ve got a 40 pound recurve bow. Sightless. I’ll have you know.

I don’t know what that means.

Don’t worry. It is one of those sports where you can get so geeky about it. Yeah, no, I’ve done it ever since. Like I said, I grew up in Dorset. So I was one of the Lichit Bowmen. There was an archery team in Lichit McTravers that I used to go to every Tuesday, shoots arrows. And it was just, it’s just gorgeous. It’s just such a lovely sport.

How old were you when you started arching?

I was 18, I think. Oh, right.

So you’re an adult.

No, I’ve done those same kind of things, you know, when you’re a kid or even when you’re an adult and you go to those away days and there’s always archery involved, like, can you shoot one of the balloons on a target and you feel like, yes, I’m Robin Hood. I can do this. And so, yeah, so I did that as like a kid and I always wanted to do it. And then I think a friend of mine, she could drive. So we just wanted to do something to get out in the open. And we found that there was this little little archery team in Lichwood Metravers that we joined and they were really nice. And this is the thing about archery, it’s a very solo sport, but everyone is really helpful. Everyone’s really connected. Everyone really wants you to do your best.

And you’re archery, you’re archery, you’re shooting arrows. What is the verb for archery?

I think it’s just, I just say I’m just doing a bit of archery. I still haven’t figured out the language. I always just say I’m going off shooting arrows, you know, which makes it sound cool.

It’s pretty cool anyway. You could actually kill a man. That’s always a cool thing.

It is. I like to think so. I’m ready for the zombie apocalypse. That’s one of the many reasons. Oh yeah.

Oh my God, you’d be the best person.

Yeah, yeah, I’m ready. I’m ready.

But this particular TV series that you were pitching, I presume you were going to play the lead of the middle man, middle woman?

No, I hadn’t really like put myself in there. If anything, at the time I was going to, I wanted to do Fiona, the one that was a LARPA and running around.

The one who’s the assistant, the second in command.

Yes. Yeah, the one that was, you know, a bit shy and everything. So I, it wasn’t one where I’d put myself in there, really. It was one that I’d put, I’d put all my friends in there, like I could totally give you the cast. It was all these people that I knew, that I was thinking of anyway, but yeah, it was just supposed to be something fun. Is that, it’s, that’s the one that I’ve got on my desktop that pops out between May to July when I’m looking out the window and it’s lovely and sunny outside. And I’ve just got these ideas of being back in the Dorset countryside and in the middle of a field watching people shooting arrows and being able to like, you know, play archery whilst you’re filming. Oh, beautiful. Love that.

Could you not, speaking from the writing point of view, could you not write, I don’t know, either an audio drama about it or audio comedy about it or even a novel about it seeing as you know so much about it and you have ideas?

Yeah, I’d loved it like that’s a that is a really good idea but I think for me it was always sort of about the countryside like again there’s also the Detectorist like that. Oh god, I love that series so much and seeing all the beautiful countryside. But you know, I’ve got so many bits of scripts that I’ve written just, you know, bits of random script, you just think of a scene and I’ve got so many bits like that on my computer and on various hard drives, I might just try and squish it together and put it in an audio thing and see if anyone’s interested.

It’s just a means to an end, isn’t it? You know, if it turns out to be successful, people go, oh, we can make a TV series out of that.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

But if that’s your, because I just have a vision of a novel or an audio series where an ex-sex worker retires to run an archery school in Dorset or something, or having created this some kind of archery business, a massive sort of conglomerate of archery related products, I don’t know, but two particularly odd bedfellows, so to speak, archery and sex work, but it just seems that way you could live your dream.

Well, they both, yeah, I mean, they both involve a lot of pricks, so absolutely.

Have you said that before? No, have you not?

No, you’re the only one that’s put the sex work and the archery together.

I think we’re moving on to something.

I think this is it.

The pricks connection.

Anyway, let’s move on.

Let’s move away from the archery and the pricks. And we’ve come to your final offcut. So tell us about this one, please.

This is called I Won’t Do That and is an audio comedy I wrote near the beginning of the pandemic in April 2020.

Hello and welcome to But I Won’t Do That, a new podcast where I, Miranda Kane, will use my entrepreneurial skills to try and earn a fiver off you, the public, by any means necessary.

Yeah, socially distanced. Remember to say you’ll do it like that.

Quite right. Hello and welcome to But I Won’t Do That, a new podcast where I, Miranda Kane, will try and earn a responsibly socially distanced fiver by any means necessary. And say why. What do you mean why?

Why do you want a fiver for doing stuff?

Because I’m skint.

But why a fiver?

Because we’re all skint. Well, unless you’re a tall one.

But why you?

Because I used to be a, you know, and frankly in a world where we can’t touch each other up, I need to use other ways of making a quick bit of cash. Is that OK? Can we just get on with it now?

Go from the top.

Hello and welcome to…

Have you not considered just getting a job?

Yes, thank you. Just press record.

Or getting up before ten o’clock?

Hello and welcome to…

I will give you a fiver right now if you get up tomorrow at eight.

Anyone is welcome to hire me for whatever they wish, be it going shopping for them, reading a bedtime story…

What about eight hours stacking shelves? You could do that for more than a fiver.

Presenting podcasts, writing jokes.

Is this because you got rejected from Cameo?

I did not get rejected from Cameo.

I’m just trying to help you out here.

Thank you very much. I’m very grateful. Thanks.

This was very interesting because the thing that struck me was that bit of conversation where he says, have you ever thought of getting a job? And I got the feeling that that’s probably a conversation you’ve had quite a lot of times against your will. A lot of people say to you, yeah, but have you ever thought about getting a job? Because you do actually earn quite a decent money. And I get the feeling that you’re just so sick of people saying that to you. Is that true? Am I correct in my assumption?

Yeah, I think that’s fair. Yeah, now I’ve looked back at my life and realised that the last time I did have a proper job was in 2007. Yeah, it is weird because my, like I said, like this kind of small town mentality, being able to have your own job and being able to work from home, like before pandemic, being able to be self-employed and sort of living hand to mouth and in these really creative ways where you’re the person who’s making the job. My family just don’t really understand it, I think. And also like friends of mine, when I’m trying to tell them that actually doing the work, if I stand on stage, that bit is the easy part. If I’m standing on stage or if I’m doing some writing, that’s great. The hard part is doing the pitching, is convincing someone that I should be on their stage, is doing the work with the admin that goes round it. That’s what I’m earning the money for, you know. And that is where I also panic and think, God, do you know what? What if I just got a job? What if I just work nine to five and I could leave everything at five o’clock and I wouldn’t have to keep checking my emails over the weekend?

Run an archery field.

I can run an archery field.

That’s what I think you should do. That would be the best of both worlds.

I didn’t think I’d be able to mix archery with my weird kind of self-employment. But now, I think that’s perfect. Absolutely.

Well, you could run an archery field and look out from your office desk where you’re writing your next script. You’ll be writing that. You’ll be watching everybody shooting their arrows in your field. So you’d sort of be self-employed, but you’d also have the security. Sorry, I sounded like your mother now. A mother. Darling, darling, just buy yourself a little bit of security. No, I didn’t mean it either. But I got the feeling, because when, as a fellow creative, you get people going, why don’t you get a proper job? To be honest, they don’t do that for very long, because I’m quite aggressive and unpleasant. So I think they just walk away eventually. But in your case, I would have thought that the sex work, rather than the writer-performer, I wondered if that was the thing that people went, yeah, but wouldn’t it be better if you had a proper job? Be safer or no?

The sex work, because people just didn’t ask me, because people had an inkling, but they just didn’t want to know. Do you know what I mean? It wasn’t those things where it’s like, so are you actually a dominatrix? What is going on there? Because I know you said it at the pub a couple of times, but I just thought you were joking. You are joking, though. They don’t really delve into it. But saying that I write about being a sex worker, or I write about how I used to be, people are still convinced that I’m still a sex worker. So they’ll be like, are you still doing it? And I’m like, no, I’m 40. No.

That must be really annoying, especially when you’re so established now as a writer or performer. But actually, surely age isn’t a barrier if you did want to go back to doing it, though.

Honestly, you can do it anytime. I mean, if anything, it’s my retirement plan. There is a niche market out there for everyone and everything. But also things have changed in the field. Nowadays, you’ve got OnlyFans. I can’t be bothered with all that. I want to be able to put up an advert back in the day. You used to be able to put up your website, say, this is what I do, this is what I don’t do, this is how much I charge, here’s my telephone number, take it or leave it. Nowadays, it’s all, oh, here’s my 30 seconds on OnlyFans, here’s my bit of free content, here’s my Twitter feed, which could get taken down at any moment. That’s what it takes to be a sex worker these days.

Really? Oh my goodness, that’s so interesting. That’s the most difficult part of being a creative or whatever, having a podcast, as I’m sure you know, just the Twitter feeds and the Facebook pages and the Instagrams. It’s difficult enough coming up with this and editing it and putting it out, and then I’ve got to spend even more time marketing it. So I would have thought the sex thing, people surely don’t need that publicising. Surely the actual act itself is enough. People, in fact, don’t want it advertised, do they?

No, yeah, it’s still exactly the same. You’ve got to put your content out there. You’ve got to be known. And also, like, we’ve had the pandemic, so people flooded onto things like OnlyFans thinking, oh, if I just put a picture of my feet up, then people are going to love it and give me loads of money. But you’ve got to advertise. You’ve got to market. It’s always been the same. It’s still in sex work. You’ve still got to advertise yourself, and you’ve still got to market yourself. That’s how I learnt about it. I started off with this marketing assistant job where I got an inkling, and I learnt how to make press releases and what content to use and da, and how to do search engine optimisation.

You didn’t. You search engine optimised your sex worker site. Keywords and things like that. You did keywords.

Yeah. I did meta tags. I did everything. I was in there like swimwear, Laura. I was on it.

I am so impressed. If I had a hat, I would be doffing it right now. High five virtually. Virtual high five there.

But nowadays it’s so different. Like that, that would have been, that was great like 10 years ago. But nowadays, you know, to get on top score of Google, like people aren’t even looking at Google anymore. They’re just going on to Instagram and OnlyFans and Twitter and using all these sites. And the problem with these sites is that any day, you could be earning like a million pounds a day. You put in your picture of your fee or whatever on there and you’re earning a million pounds a day. And then one day, someone in Silicon Valley says, oh, we’ve had enough of this. Let’s clean up shop and we’ll get rid of all these naughty people and make sure that it’s only for the celebrities. And boom, you’ve lost your whole income stream because they’ve just made one little change to their terms of service.

But don’t you have, sorry, is this not, of all businesses, a business where you can get word of mouth or repeat customers?

It is. If you’re, if you’re, if you’re.

I’m sorry, I’m getting out of becoming your mother.

If you are, there are some people who are very good with their customers. I was not, as you may have heard in the first clip.

But I thought that was for comedy purposes. There was actually a bit of documentary evidence, wasn’t it?

I had very, I had a few regulars and they were very nice, but I wasn’t putting all my eggs in their basket, shall we say. I’m very clinical with people. But some women, that’s how they work. Like I used to know someone who, she never had a website or anything. She just had a separate mobile phone to the one she used. And it was just all word of mouth and repeat customers. But for me, nah.

So in that case, there is a need to keep advertising, I suppose, that’s a shame. Fascinating stuff. Absolutely fascinating. All right, well, we’ve come to the end of the show. How was it for you?

Oh, this has been, honestly, I’ve really enjoyed hearing all the work, because sometimes you just don’t know whether it will work out loud. Like I can see it on paper, but to hear it being played, and also because a couple of them were bits that I’ve written for myself, so I know how I want it to be said, but to hear it being played back has been a real joy. And also just to get the inspiration, like there were some things when I was digging around, and I was like, God, I really do want to get back to this. I really do think there is an idea here. And like you said about doing it in a different way, you know, maybe there’s a novels, maybe there’s an audio thing. So it’s been a real joy to talk about it and just to put those things out there and to know they won’t die on my laptop and never see the light of day.

Did you hear anything that surprised you at all about your writing or your creativity or any of your ideas?

Yeah, I…

You can say no, by the way. You can say no, I knew exactly what I was doing when I got with you and I heard exactly what I expected to hear.

Yeah, I think I’m surprised that I heard what I heard in my head, if that makes sense. And that’s why I think I rely on writing for myself to do things, because I think, well, I know what I’m trying to say. I know how I’m supposed to say it here. And so it has really surprised me that the wonderful actors have interpreted that and have seen what I was trying to say and said it in the way that I was trying to say it. And I know you can say, well, that’s because like italics and all this, but it’s there’s just something in it like, you know, the pauses and the gaps and getting it is such a wonderful thing to hear. Yeah, maybe I can start writing for other people rather than trying to get my own fucking face on television all the time. So I might try that in the future.

And then you can sit in your archery field and shoot people from afar and make lots of money.

Yes.

Well, well, that’s it really. Thank you very much for doing that. And thank you for sharing your offcuts and your life story with me and the listener.

Oh, thank you. I’m so honestly, this has been such an honour. And, you know, to have anyone read and perform your work is always such an honor anyway. So, you know, but for it to be bits that have just sort of been lost in time and forgotten about has been so nice and really inspirational as well. So thank you so much.

The Offcuts Drawer was devised and presented by me, Laura Shavin, with special thanks to this week’s guest, Miranda Kane. The Offcuts were performed by Chris Pavlo, Bhavnisha Parmar and Emma Clarke, and the music was by me. For more details, visit offcutsdrawer.com, and please do subscribe, rate and review us, and recommend us to friends. Thanks for listening.