LYNN RUTH MILLER
Komedia, Gardner Street, Brighton,
July 10 and 22

Many people could say I can’t sing but nobody could say I didn’t.”

The words that grace talentless opera singer Florence Foster Jenkins’s gravestone.

Lynn Ruth Miller, an 80-year-old Brighton-based comic who managed to make Simon Cowell laugh on Britain’s Got Talent, reveres Jenkins.

“She was really an admirable if crazy woman,” explains Miller, who has just moved to the south coast from San Francisco.

She channels Jenkins’s motto. She decided to try stand-up a year after her 70th birthday and ten years on is becoming an 80-year-old migrant.

She was writing a feature about The San Francisco Comedy College for California’s Pacifica Tribune. To give the piece some colour she enrolled on the course.

“As part of the course, I did their final. It proved to me that anyone can do anything they want to do. I have been working on this new “career” for ten years, far longer than any other career I have had.”

Unlike Jenkins, Miller discovered her true calling. She’s become a regular at Brighton Fringe and Edinburgh Fringe. Latest TV recently confirmed her as a presenter for its Brighton Nights show. Most impressive is the TO&ST Award (Time Out and Soho Theatre) she picked up for her show Granny’s Gone Wild.

Her previous careers include primary school teacher, professor, feature writer, reviewer. She’s written plays and books and says comedy is “no more or less challenging than any other profession I have tried to master”.

Still, she never stripped for work before.

“Granny’s Gone Wild is a little bit more outrageous than what I actually am. I throw incontinence pads at everyone. But the main thing I do is I get everybody participating. They’re singing along with me. That’s good.”

Granny’s Gone Wild won the TO&ST Award.

“It was the most exciting thing for me. You have to think why I do all this. It’s different from young people. I do it because I can. And I do it because it is getting such positive response. For someone my age to be able to communicate with this wide swath of people is incredible.”

Not Dead Yet is the second of two upcoming Brighton performances. It is more musical and for the first time Miller has a professional director, Sarah-Louise Young, and a musical director, Michael Roulston. She will take it to Edinburgh Fringe in August.

“People relate to it because the one thing everybody fears is what they are going to be like when they are 80 and 90 years old. I don’t tell them. I show them.”

Her previous show, 80!, a cabaret, showed there was nothing to fear.

“The way you age is a choice. If you are unhappy as you age. That is your fault because all of us have diminishing abilities at every age. I am not denying it will make you diminish. In fact that is the basis of a lot of my comedy. I make a lot of jokes that we try to hide we aren’t as fast or sharp as we used to be. But life is a beautiful thing. You live the day you have.”

But what about turning 80: was it just another day?

“No it was huge. I had a cake with 80 candles on it. You try blowing that out without spitting.”