News : Comedy writer left “mortified” after Jarvis Cocker remembers her as teenager from Pulp gig in Birmingham

Comedy writer Ruth Husko has said she was “mortified” after Jarvis Cocker remembered her as a teenager from a Pulp gig in Birmingham.

Husko, who has written for Channel 4’s Late Night Lycett and BBC Radio’s DMs Are Open – attended the Birmingham stop on Pulp’s ongoing ‘You Deserve More’ UK arena tour, and later took to X/Twitter to share an image from the Utilita Arena gig.

At the June 19 show, Cocker addressed the crowd and recalled one of the band’s previous performances at the NEC back in 1998. “He said at one point in the show he’d tried to pull a net of balloons from the ceiling, but it didn’t work properly – only one balloon fell out,” Husko’s post began.

“He went on to describe how a woman at the front of the crowd had grabbed that sole balloon and then he did a little impression of the woman, really enthusiastically waving the balloon around like a moron for the rest of the show. He summed it up saying it was the most humiliating experience of his life and everyone laughed.”

She went on to say that the woman was 15 years old, and she knew because it was her. “I was a Pulp mega fan back then and would’ve done anything for Jarvis to acknowledge my existence,” she added. “Now he’s doing an impression of me looking like a fucking dollop in front of an audience of thousands.

Wrapping up her post, she joked: “Was absolutely mortified but at least I didn’t dress up as Rolf Harris for Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes (2002)”, and shared an image of Cocker impersonating the former Animal Hospital presenter.

Harris had been made an MBE, an OBE and a CBE before he was convicted of 12 sexual offences in 2014, but these honours were all revoked in March 2015. In November 2015, he was reportedly hospitalised after gorging on chocolate in prison.

She later joked that it was funny to be described as a “woman” by Cocker, because by her reckoning, she was “5ft 9, obese and used to wear a Caterpillar jacket,” and “looked like a divorced bricklayer from Stoke.”

As for Pulp, the band’s UK arena tour continues with dates in Manchester and Birmingham, as well as seeing them headline Tramlines in their native Sheffield. Visit here for tickets and more information.

Speaking to NME about Britpop, ageing, sexuality and the journey to new album ‘More’, Cocker recently teased that the wait for more new material might not quite be so long.

“We tried to not have a concept for this record or think, ‘This is it, this is our last gas’,” he said. “I used to think that a lot. I had this weird thing that when an album was mixed and finished where I’d think, ‘Oh, I can die now and it would be OK’. That’s a terrible way to think about your life, really. I didn’t feel that with this record.

“On the sleeve inside it says, ‘This is the best that we can do’. That’s all you can do at any point of your life. Hopefully not in another 24 years, but maybe in a couple of years, there will be something else to say.”

In a four-star review of ‘More’, NME concluded: “Drenched in synths and strings and aided by producer James Ford’s knack for making the music feel alive and omnipresent, ‘More’ is everything you’d want a Pulp album to be, made richer from some lived experience.

“Just as Blur did with ‘The Ballad Of Darren’ and Suede have managed on their immaculate run of post-reunion albums, Pulp have retained their original spirit and flair into a statement of middle age without feeling any less vital. As Cocker pines on the cinematic closer ‘A Sunset’, all things end, so just make the most of the time you have. It’s strangely beautiful, now they’re all fully grown.”

Pulp are widely believed to be the mysterious ‘Patchwork’ set to play a secret set at Glastonbury next week, with HAIM appearing to confirm themselves as the TBA slot on The Park Stage, and Lewis Capaldi said to be the surprise guest on the Friday on the Pyramid Stage. Find the full line-up so far here.

Cocker also recently spoke to NME about the loss of The Leadmill in his native Sheffield – and the chances of him playing there again.