Sharon Horgan was born in Hackney, east London in 1970. When she was seven her family moved to County Meath in Ireland to run a turkey farm. Horgan moved back to London in her early 20s, juggling acting with various jobs including selling bongs in Camden. In 2000 she graduated from Brunel University with a degree in English and American studies. In 2001 she won a BBC New Comedy award, and her role in BBC3 comedy series Pulling, which she co-created with Dennis Kelly, earned her a Bafta nomination and two British Comedy awards. She co-wrote and starred in the hit 2015 Channel 4 series Catastrophe with comedian Rob Delaney. The second series starts on Tuesday, C4, 10pm.
1 | Film
I love documentaries – there’s something incredibly inspiring about someone shooting hundreds of hours of footage and then managing to craft it into a narrative that’s as good as a written script. I loved Sugarman and Senna and Amy. Palio was a surprise because it’s a sport film, and I’m not a mad horseracing fanatic, although I loved watching the Grand National as a kid. The Palio is this ancient race that’s held every year in Siena, in Italy. I think it’s the oldest horse race in the world. It’s a 90-second race, and depending on how riders do they’re heroes or villains. There’s a whole political backstory behind it, how you can manipulate the race. It was devastating to watch the ambition and the power and the aggression. It felt like stepping back in time – I found it very powerful.
2 | Band
It’s safe to say I’m obsessed by Metronomy. I probably listen to them every day, and when we’re looking for music for Catastrophe, I think it’s incredibly boring for everyone in the room because every time I’ll say, what about this Metronomy track? Especially The English Riviera. It feels like an album that has a real journey about it, like there’s a narrative to all the songs, and it takes you somewhere else. I associate music that I listened to when I was younger, like the Fall, with darker times, and I’m not entirely comfortable with that. I think it’s sometimes good to leave music behind. I need something that’s going to lift me up, and that’s what Metronomy do. I associate them with summers and festivals, and nice fun times.
3 | Book
A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus
It’s unfortunate that I don’t read that much any more. I used to be an avid reader, now it’s mainly articles on my stupid phone. But this is a book that I carry around in my bag as a sort of dip-into-it thing. It’s about the breakdown of a marriage set against the backdrop of 9/11, with the overriding idea that jihadists may hate America but not as much as a couple in the throes of an acrimonious divorce hate each other. It begins with both the characters hoping the other one has been killed in the attacks, and it’s downhill from there. It took me a long time to read because it made me so anxious I had to keep putting it down. I’ve bought it four times now, I keep losing it. I think maybe it’s trying to get away from me but I keep buying it again. It gets a little cameo in Catastrophe.
4 | Gig
Kate Bush at Hammersmith Apollo
The greatest gigs for me have been mainly outdoors – Bowie, Neil Young, Björk, Arcade Fire – but I think the one that broke me the most was Kate Bush. She’s such a goddess to me. I’ve been listening to her since I was 13. Great art can make you want to make better work, but this gig – and this sounds incredibly cheesy – actually made me want to be a better person. Something exudes from her where you just think, there’s great humanity there. I nearly missed the gig: I was resigned to not seeing it and it depressed the hell out of me, but someone contacted me on Twitter last minute. So it was really crazy. I ended up going with these strangers and it was lovely. We had this great big hug at the end and everyone was just fucked up by it.
5 | Comedy
At the moment I’m watching mainly female comics, I don’t know why: Bridget Christie, Sara Pascoe, Aisling Bea and Maria Bamford. I love going to see standup, the pure thing of being made to laugh, but there is something about also learning something at the end, and feeling like, “Oh my God you tricked me into learning something through laughter.” Bridget’s show was exactly that. She makes me laugh but it’s so much more. Like when I went to see Sara Pascoe’s show, you’re just learning. I definitely think you come out of those sort of shows feeling like a more informed person, and you feel passionate. They manage to make you feel passionately aware of the thing that they give a shit about.
6 | Art
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao
I’m not an art buff really, but this was the last great gallery I visited. It blew my mind. Apart from the building itself, which is extraordinarily beautiful, it was the variety of stuff on show and how it takes you through history, giving you a different view on things that have happened. We wandered into this room where there was some Robert Crumb and I was excited because I’m a big comic-book art fan. I was shouting to my daughter, “Hey this is Robert Crumb’s work in here,” stupidly, because he’s borderline pornographic. So she was propelled forward into a very graphic sexual education right there. I wanted to be a comic-book artist for years, I just wasn’t good enough. But I just love it as a medium, as a storytelling medium. I think it’s nostalgic for me as well, reading comics back in the day in my tiny room was a big thing.
7 | Art
I love eating out. I used to cook a lot more than I do. I get a bit lazy about it now, but when I do go out it’s generally with my kids. You have to find somewhere that’s kid-friendly and also gets the food out super-quick. I live in Hackney so I end up eating there a lot: we’re so spoilt by all the amazing restaurants. Lucky Chip is a pop-up that does the best burgers: we went when they were at the Sebright Arms, but they’ve moved now [to Birthdays in Dalston]. I don’t think I’ll ever go off the idea of a burger. I was a vegetarian for 16 years and a vegan for two, and it’s still surprising to me how much I can gorge on rare steak pummelled into a burger shape. It’s kind of vile to me but obviously delicious.
