About Viv Groskop
Viv Groskop is a British award-winning writer, comedian, broadcaster and performance coach. She is the author of the best-selling How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking (Penguin) and Lift As You Climb: Women and the Art of Ambition (Penguin). Her award-nominated podcast How to Own the Room is the biggest public speaking podcast in the world — with over a million downloads — and features interviews with Hillary Clinton, Margaret Atwood, Professor Mary Beard, Julie Andrews, Google CEO Matt Brittin, Succession’s Brian Cox and dozens more talking about public speaking, confidence and managing high-pressure situations. Her other books include The Anna Karenina Fix (Penguin) — a best-seller in translation in Russia and Finland — and Au Revoir, Tristesse (Abrams). She appears regularly on BBC TV and radio and for six years she did a run of sold-out one-woman comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
On BBC Radio 4 Viv has guest-presented Saturday Live, Saturday Review and Front Row. She was a regular guest on Andrew Neil’s This Week on BBC1 until the show’s demise in 2020 and she has also appeared on Woman’s Hour, Today, Newsnight, This Morning, University Challenge and Sky News. As a columnist she writes regularly for the Guardian and the Financial Times and has a regular column in Waitrose Health magazine on working life.
Viv switched from journalism to stand-up comedy in the early 2010s, performing 100 gigs in 100 consecutive nights, which led to the finals of Funny Women 2012 and to her first book I Laughed, I Cried. She has performed five one-woman shows at the Edinburgh Fringe (The Stand, Underbelly): I Laughed, I Cried (2014), Say Sorry to the Lady (2015), Be More Margo (2016), Anchorwoman (2017) and Vivalicious (2018). She has written and starred in five plays for BBC Radio 4 (produced by Big Fish Films): Read the Room (2019), Twelve Weeks (2019), A Fair Shot (2020), What He Would Have Wanted (2020) and Christmas Every Day (2021).
She is one of the most sought-after speakers for stand-up, MCing, awards hosting and keynote speaking. Keynote themes include How to Own the Room, Lift As You Climb, Women in Leadership, Female Empowerment, Authenticity and The Embrace of Failure. For all speaker enquiries, please email leo@vbqspeakers.com.
Her favourite recent gig was hosting Schitt’s Creek’s Dan Levy in front of 2,000 screaming fans at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Yes, she came dressed as Moira Rose. Of course!
OUT NOW
Au Revoir, Tristesse
Lessons in happiness from the French classics from Proust, Balzac, Flaubert, Colette and more — plus, of course, Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour, Tristesse. “Charming” — The Sunday Times. “Chic” — The Observer. “Full of gossipy nuggets” — Irish Times
BOOKS
Have you read...?
Check out Viv’s non-fiction books, from her memoir on stand-up comedy, I Laughed, I Cried, to her guide to getting ahead at work, Lift As You Climb
PODCAST
How to Own the Room
With guests like Hillary Clinton, Professor Mary Beard and Catherine Tate, Viv’s award-nominated podcast has over a million downloads and is the biggest audio resource on women and public speaking in the world
PODCAST
We Can Rebuild Her
Viv interviews authors, therapists, coaches and business leaders on how to come out of the pandemic better than before. A hefty dose of optimism and inspiration.
