Viv Groskop

Viv Groskop (born 8 July 1973[1]) is a British journalist, writer and comedian. She has written for publications including The Guardian, Evening Standard, The Observer, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Red magazine.[2] She writes on arts, books, popular culture and current affairs, often with a feminist slant.[3] She is a stand-up comedian,[4] MC and improviser who was a finalist in Funny Women 2012[5] and semi-finalist in So You Think You're Funny 2012.[6] She is an agony aunt for The Pool[7] and host of the Mint Velvet clothing podcast 'We are Women'.[8]

Life and career

Groskop was born in Hampshire and, with her younger sister Trudy, was raised in Bruton, Somerset. She won a scholarship to Bruton School for Girls, and later read Russian and French at Selwyn College, Cambridge, graduating with a first-class degree. She has an MA with distinction in Russian Studies from University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies.[9] Since her teens, Groskop had believed her surname was Russian until a Canadian cousin[10] mapped her family tree and discovered that the antecedents of the Groskop name was Yiddish meaning "fathead" and her Jewish great-great-grandfather Gershon Groskop had come to Great Britain in the 1860s from Lodz in Poland.[11][12] Gershon Groskop was also the great grandfather of Gethin Jones.[13]

Groskop began her career in journalism at Esquire as an editorial assistant for Rosie Boycott at the age of 22. Groskop joined the Daily Express while Boycott was editor, becoming a columnist on the Sunday Express at the age of 25. She has been described as one of the most successful freelance journalists in the UK,[14] and has twice been short-listed for the Periodical Publishers Association Columnist of the Year.[15]

Groskop is a contributing editor at Russian Vogue. For the UK press, she has interviewed Russian speakers in their mother tongue - among them Marina Litvinenko, widow of the murdered Alexander Litvinenko[16] and Beslan school hostage crisis survivor Fatima Dzgoeva.[17] She also interviews in French, including the surviving daughter of Suite Francaise author Irène Némirovsky.[18]

Groskop's documentaries for BBC Radio 4 include It's Just a Joke Comrade, on Russian satire [19] and L'origine de L'Origine du monde on the painting by Gustave Courbet.[20] She was a studio guest in the first TV edition of the BBC arts show Front Row.[21][22] She appears occasionally on 'Saturday Live',[23][24][25] Sky News, BBC Radio 4's Today programme,[26] Any Questions, Front Row[27] and Woman's Hour,[28] and on Nick Ferrari's LBC 97.3 programme. She blogs about Downton Abbey and Poldark for The Guardian.[29][30]

Her first book, I Laughed, I Cried, is an account of Groskop performing one hundred comedy gigs in one hundred nights. It is described as "an experiment in doing what you want, even if it is terrifying, without giving up the day job". It was published by Orion on 27 June 2013.[31] Her latest book, The Anna Karenina Fix, Life Lessons From Russian Literature, was published by Penguin on 5 October 2017. [32]

Groskop was the Artistic Director of the Bath Literature Festival, the first season under her charge being held in February 2014 [33] and the last in 2016 when 'the much-loved chief was waved off with a raucous party in Igloo'.[34]

References

  1. ↑ Viv Groskop "I'm 40: the confusion starts here", The Observer, 6 July 2013
  2. ↑ Hannah Gilchrist, "Viv Groskop’s Top Tips For Autumn Winter 2011", Red, 10 October 2011.
  3. ↑ Viv Groskop, "Rod Liddle: Maybe I was wrong to say I wouldn't sleep with Harriet Harman", Evening Standard, 2 October 2009.
  4. ↑ "New book The Anna Karenina Fix". Viv Groskop. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  5. ↑ "Funny Women Awards 2012 Finalist - Viv Groskop", Funny Women.
  6. ↑ "Heat 7 contestants", So You Think You're Funny?
  7. ↑ Groskop, Viv (2015-05-09). "Life - Dear Viv: Do trial separations actually work?". The Pool. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  8. ↑ "We are Women | The Podcast 01". Mint Velvet. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  9. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-05-31. Retrieved 2009-10-16.
  10. ↑ "The Groskop Family of Stockton. | Picture Stockton Archive". Picturestocktonarchive.wordpress.com. 2005-05-13. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  11. ↑ Groskop, Viv (2 October 2017). "To Russia with unrequited love". The Mail on Sunday. Retrieved 7 October 2017.
  12. ↑ "Let little girls be in the pink | Viv Groskop | Opinion". The Guardian. 2011-03-26. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  13. ↑ Abbie Wightwick (2012-11-17). "How TV star Gethin Jones' ancestors saved thousands of lives". Wales Online. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  14. ↑ Kira Cochrane Mslexia magazine, October 2009
  15. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-07-19. Retrieved 2009-10-15.
  16. ↑ Viv Groskop "Marina Litvinenko", The Observer, 3 June 2007
  17. ↑ Viv Groskop "The Beslan siege five years on", The Guardian, 8 August 2009
  18. ↑ "A masterpiece from history's suitcase", The Age, 4 March 2006.
  19. ↑ It's Just a Joke Comrade
  20. ↑ L'origine de L'Origine du monde
  21. ↑ Front Row
  22. ↑ Ed Power (2017-09-24). "Front Row struggles to make the leap from Radio 4 to TV – review". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  23. ↑ "BBC Radio 4 - Saturday Live, Viv Groskop's comedy marathon; Paul Nicholas's Inheritance Tracks". Bbc.co.uk. 2013-06-22. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  24. ↑ "BBC Radio 4 - Saturday Live, Viv Groskop and Paul Sinton-Hewitt". Bbc.co.uk. 2015-01-10. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  25. ↑ "BBC Radio 4 - Saturday Live, Gloria Hunniford". Bbc.co.uk. 2017-10-07. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  26. ↑ "BBC - Today - Today: Tuesday 8 September 2009". BBC News. 2009-09-08. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  27. ↑ "BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, David Walliams, US TV series Girls". Bbc.co.uk. 2012-10-15. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  28. ↑ "Radio 4 Woman's Hour - Pre-school clothes and gender". BBC. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  29. ↑ Viv Groskop, "Downton Abbey: series three, episode one", The Guardian, 16 September 2012.
  30. ↑ "Poldark: episode by episode | Television & radio". the Guardian. Retrieved 2016-10-05.
  31. ↑ "I Laughed, I Cried" page at Orion Publishing.
  32. ↑ Viv Groskop. "The Anna Karenina Fix, Life Lessons from Russian Literature". Penguin.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
  33. ↑ Katie Jarvis, "Viv Groskop and the Bath Literature Festival", Cotswold Life, 18 February 2014.
  34. ↑ Nick Clark (2016-03-07). "Bath Literature Festival: From a dark take on 'Little House on the Prairie' to a lively Brexit discussion". The Independent. Retrieved 2018-03-09.
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