Cultural Life: Josie Long, Comedian

"I can watch a whole week's worth of Come Dine With Me in one sitting"

Books

I'm reading the Best American Nonrequired Reading (2007). It's a collection of stories and articles rooted out by high-school kids from San Francisco and edited by Dave Eggers. They are surprising and really great to read.

Film

I just watched Short Cuts for the first time. Tom Waits is in it, which is a small good thing. Everyone in the film is perpetually sad and damaged, and just getting on with it. It's brilliant.

Music

A friend introduced me to Cathy Davey, who I really like. And I just bought Let's Wrestle's first EP In Loving Memory Of – a tiny teen powerhouse of a band. Other than that, I listen to A River Ain't Too Much to Love, by Smog, on a near-obsessive basis. I like pretending I'm riding the freight trains, when all I'm doing is walking down Peckham High Street.

Television

I can watch a whole week's worth of Come Dine With Me in one sitting, but sometimes the narrator is too needlessly sarcastic: "Sarah is cooking a stew. What a fat idiot!" I can't get over how much I like The Supersizers. It's funny, silly and informative and the two of them are charming and cool.

Theatre/Comedy

I'm really excited because my favourite show from the Melbourne Festival is transferring to Edinburgh. It's called Simply Fancy and it's by a group called Pig Island. They are so original, it is at once inspiring and totally crushing. I'm also excited to see Luke Roberts and Nadia Kamil's new show. The title is long and features the word "behemoth".

Visual Arts

I was in Tokyo recently and went to an exhibition of the paintings of Oscar Oiwa. He paints cities that seem threatening and alive with magic and strangeness.

Josie Long will be at the Edinburgh Festival (www.edfringe.com) from 30 July to 25 August. Her DVD, 'Trying Is Good', is out on 28 July