Jade Franks on how cleaning toilets at Cambridge inspired her hit show: ‘I’m not watering down the fury – just sneaking it through the back door’

The Merseyside comic used her experiences of Oxbridge to create the fringe hit Eat the Rich, but struggled in ways her well-off contemporaries didn’t. Now she’s determined to use success to bring more working-class voices into comedyJade Franks was scrubbing loos while her peers were playing polo. A working-class student at Cambridge, living a double life as a cleaner alongside full-time studies, she has parlayed her experience into her winningly titled play Eat the Rich (But Maybe Not Me Mates x). An early, buzzy hit at the Edinburgh festival fringe, the comic skewering of the Oxbridge elite sold out its initial run, added extra shows and won multiple awards, including a sought-after Fringe First. With a London run and regional tour about to kick off, Eat the Rich now follows in the footsteps of Fleabag and Baby Reindeer in being developed for TV, with a bidding war seeing the show currently under development with Netflix and Adolescence director Philip Barantini’s indie company It’s All Made Up Productions. But Franks is a grafter, and she’s only just getting started.“I was always really ambitious,” says Franks, in her lush scouse accent, wearing thick cat-eye glasses. “I don’t think I was fully aware of class until it was stopping me from getting where I wanted.” Fictionalising her own life, Eat the Rich undercuts Franks’s effortless charm with rage at wealth inequality. Tracing her first term, the arcane rituals and alien environments get her into regular pickles simply because she doesn’t understand the state of play: dinners are suddenly conducted in Latin; money-oozing peers mimic her accent; and the grated cheddar she brings to a party is swiftly rejected from the cheese board. Continue reading...