Comedian spreads Jewish joy

“I am now part of a Jewish actors’ group and find that being in a reduced circle means I am more likely to create something. It was [Israeli writer and intellectual] Yuval Harari who said that people were more productive in small numbers.”

Tammer does however concede that organising her own shows – in effect, being her own boss – has meant that she hasn’t been as vulnerable to the same amount of discrimination as other Jewish artists.

Nonetheless, she has still had her fair share of antisemitic abuse on social media, where above her Instagram handle, her name appears in Hebrew, and below it, the word “Jewess” in capital letters, “so people know what they are getting”.

She has also found herself at times in the uncomfortable position of being in the same lineup as comedians who use antisemitic content. “There was this occasion when the comic before me started making antisemitic jokes about rents in New York. I could feel the heat building in my chest, so when it was my turn, I burst onto the stage and said: ‘I see antisemitism is back in fashion.’

“The audience had just been laughing at his antisemitic jokes, and I pulled the rug from under their feet. If there’s an elephant in the room, I will always address it.”

Debra TammerJohn Cafaro

Hopefully, there won’t be many – if any – elephants in the room on January 23, when Tammer will be hosting C&MP (short for a Comedy & Music Party) in a north-west London venue, an event she describes as “a variety night” of comics, musicians and a DJ – some Jewish and some “Jewish adjacent”. Performers include pianist Natasha Panas, comic Ally Beaton and DJ Elsteen.

Growing up in an observant Jewish family in Leeds, Tammer, 49, doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t love to perform. “At the age of four, I and my cousins would entertain the family on Shabbos afternoons.”

With aspirations to become an actor, Tammer even pretended to have a lisp so her mother would arrange elocution lessons with a drama teacher for her.

But her parents weren’t convinced that acting was “conducive with being a frum Jewish girl”, an understandable viewpoint when Tammer – a very witty raconteur – recalls how her acting obsession had to fit in with keeping Shabbat.

“When I was 15, I won a prize at the Horsforth Drama Festival and as the award ceremony was on Shabbat, we walked for four hours to get there. It didn’t help that my secret Irish Catholic boyfriend also turned up. I told him not to talk to my parents, but he did, and I was quickly ‘outed’.”

Going on to study English at Oxford – “really helpful when it later came to learning chunks of script by heart” – she went on to LAMDA to study classical acting.

But it was a sadistic drama teacher who recognised that Tammer’s greatest gift lay in comedy.

“I was always being cast as the funny woman, and this teacher said to me one day [putting on a very posh accent]: ‘The problem with you, Debra, is that you hide behind the mask of humour.’ This teacher was trying to humiliate me, but really, she did me a favour.”

Reading through her CV, there is a strong comedic vein running throughout. In Kay Mellor’s comedy drama Fat Friends, Tammer was cast as the “thin” neurotic girl and, later on, she played “the part of crazy Jewish friend” in rom com Suzie Gold.

Her writing credits include Mancunian Rhapsody, an award-winning musical comedy about a religious Jewish woman from Manchester with a love of Freddie Mercury music, and the award-winning stage show Pop, Pop, Pop, whose central character is a pregnant X-Factor reject, who believes Olly Murs to be the father of her unborn child. Tammer played this role herself while eight months pregnant but had to stop after a week as she “was literally giving birth”.

The play was written “at a time when reality TV was really taking over, and I was really interested in why people without talent become famous and successful. I thought it would be funny to create this character from Essex, but she also had mental health difficulties, so it was a way of using comedy to deal with serious issues.”

Comedy and tragedy are “really just two sides of the same coin”, says Tammer. “They say that the equation for comedy is tragedy plus time. Once you have expressed what you are going through and processed it, it’s possible to find the funny side.”

It was a move to New York from Primrose Hill in north-west London in 2019 with her husband and three daughters which enabled Tammer to firmly establish herself on the comedy circuit.

Once there, she enrolled at the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) comedy school and theatre institution, where she became part of an improv group. She was due to put on a show in March 2020, and then Covid hit and the curtain – quite literally - came down on theatre.

Debra has upcoming gigs in London and New York[Missing Credit]

As is her way when disaster strikes, Tammer picked up both herself and her pen and began writing. “I decided to just throw myself into comedy, and tried to commit to my own personal experiences instead of playing a character. I had to drop the mask. When people are watching stand-up, they want something raw.”

Her big break came when she won a competition to get a residency at a comedy club – where she again took a calamity and turned it into a success.

“It was soon after lockdown, and so each of us performers were given our own sanitised mic and told we just had to twist the mic and slot it [into the speaker] before we had five minutes to do our act.

“The rule in comedy is that if you aren’t making the audience laugh every 11 seconds, you’ve lost them. But I was unable to slot the mic in and had to improvise. Fortunately, this made them laugh a lot, so I ended up winning the competition all because of a mistake.”

When the family moved back to London in 2023, they returned to South Hampstead Synagogue, which Tammer calls “the best shul on the planet”, above and beyond the “smorgasbord” of synagogues she had visited while in New York.

Returning to New York for monthly gigs, Tammer has had to adapt her craft to fit in with her Jewish observance – and, sometimes, vice-versa. “I’ve had to turn down a lot of roles when filming has been on Shabbat, and I’ve also been known to walk to gigs.

“I am more flexible nowadays, and although I love Judaism, I have broken the rules. But hopefully I’m bringing joy, so it’s okay.”

C&MP 

Comedy & Music Party

January 23

8.30pm

north-west London venue

Click here for tickets

Tammer is also bringing C&MP to New York this week

January 15

7pm

@acrossthepond_productions