Speaking at Newnham College earlier this month to discuss their new online magazine, The Standard Issue, Sarah Millican sat alongside her colleague Hannah Dunleavy.

In 2013, Millican was listed as one of the UK’s 100 most powerful women by Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. She is currently on her fourth tour, has appeared on almost every panel show on TV, and her own, The Sarah Millican Television Programme, ran for three series. Yet, despite her overwhelming success, she remains grounded. As she quietly walks into the room and takes her seat, few people in the audience look up or notice her arrival at all. Her lack of stage presence, however, dissolves the minute she opens her mouth. From then on, she commands the room - but her approachability and normality never fade.  

Millican started The Standard Issue, she explains, because she didn’t see anything in so-called women’s magazines that she wanted to read. The fashion pages were redundant ("A coat for £1200? My first car was a bit more than that, fuck off"), as were celebrity pages ("I don’t care who’s going out with who, I’m not even bothered about that with my friends").  

These comments are characteristic of Millican. Her words are incisive, insightful, occasionally ruthless but all are delivered while giggling. When an organiser tells the pair to hold their microphones up, Millican is straight in with "She’s teaching me microphone technique! This is my fucking job, love!" Her demeanour is reminiscent of Rob Brydon’s stand-up: she acts innocent whilst savagely ripping into the audience, the unexpectedness of her jibes only adding to the humour.

In terms of the lack of varied content in women’s magazines, Millican has once again exactly hit the mark. She and Dunleavy bill the magazine as a "healthy alternative" and The Standard Issue, possibly one of the broadest ranging magazines in the UK in both content and in readership, certainly serves its purpose. The articles are written by contributors from across the country and include topics ranging from “A marvellous menopause” to an ode to Louise Rennison, the recently deceased author of the Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging series. The readers are similarly diverse, with an online survey revealing an age range of 18-72, 25 per cent of whom are men. This huge diversity is not without risk: the magazine may never accrue a loyal audience who identify the magazine as ‘theirs’. So far, however, this risk seems to be paying off.

Varsity asks if Millican feels frustrated that she is the one who has to stand up and take responsibility for this lack of good content for women, a result of her fame. Her answer is inspiring. "No, not annoyed at all. Sort of honoured to be the one that goes 'Okay, well nobody else is doing it, let’s do it.'"

"I’m quite proactive generally; I don’t dilly-dally. If something needs doing, I do it and I didn’t really think about how I felt about the responsibility. I just thought, well there’s a gap there, let’s see if other people agree that there’s a gap there. 

"I’m thrilled to be able to provide something, along with the whole team who are amazing. I’m very happy to spot the gap and fill the gap!"

Millican expresses her appreciation for the magazine’s team several times during the afternoon, contrasting it to the male-dominated environment of comedy. Speaking at the Union last year,  Ed Byrne suggested that the comedy industry is not sexist but its audiences are, being much less likely to be generous to a woman doing stand-up. "Spoken like a true man," says Millican. "In some ways, the industry is sexist [and] has a tendency to take more chances with less funny men." She observes that, while a male comic is permitted an off-day, if a female comic has a bad show, other female comics are dragged into its critique, an 'are women funny?’ bandwagon.

Millican is positive that observational comedy, such as Amy Schumer’s material, can make a real difference with issues like gender inequality. "Comedy’s always been a really good way of sneaking actual issues under the radar. If I just got up and did a talk I don’t think I would sell out theatres. Certainly when you watch somebody like Bridget Christie, you’ll howl for an hour but you come away going 'Wow, I hadn’t thought about that at all and now I am.' Millican’s entire demeanour seems geared towards this kind of thinking: delivering hard-hitting material in an entertaining, subversive way. It is reminiscent of the time she explained why some men don’t like to watch How to Look Good Naked: "I think to some men, women aren’t as sexy if they’re empowered." In response to audience laughter: "That’s not really a joke, it’s just a bloody good point, isn’t it?"

Millican’s energy in the face of the tiring fight of women being side-lined in comedy is certainly refreshing, and surely something to be welcomed.