English actress, comedian and activist Elizabeth Anne Carr, better known as Liz Carr, has been in a civil partnership with her longtime partner Jo Church – now her wife – since 2010.
They met on the comedy circuit. And, at the wedding ceremony, Liz’s dad gave a speech she still look back on with fondness. It included references to her becoming disabled – crucially, without dwelling on it.
“He joked about how I’d banned him from saying things like brave, inspirational and special,” she said. “Everyone laughed, including me.”
Comments Liz Carr received from male colleagues when she started dating her wife
Two years after Covid-19 swept its way through ordinary life, Liz – on Saturday Kitchen this weekend (May 10) – was still being extra careful. As a vulnerable person, “everything feels like a risk assessment”, she told The Guardian in 2022.
She can’t do the things people take for granted. As a child, doctors told her she shouldn’t expect to live to be old. Liz recently turned 50 – not old, but a landmark birthday she delighted in celebrating.
When she started dating Jo Church in the late 2000s, her male colleagues on the comedy circuit told her she was “punching above [her] weight”. She shared: “When I got together with my wife, I was on the comedy circuit at the time, and I remember particularly the male comics being like: ‘You’re punching above your weight.'”
They have been civilly partnered since 2010. Liz says her wife is “very good for balance” – and occasionally reading the comments people make about her online in order to screen out the nastier stuff.
“She pointed out the amount of love that I had before winning the Olivier, and then winning, including so much from other disabled people.”
When a friend has a fancy dress party with the theme of ‘TV, film, sport or music legends’. . .
I get to dig out a few old bits of costume from #SilentWitness
& @thevjoiners agrees to be my trusty forensic sidekick.For one night only, Jack & Clarissa are back! pic.twitter.com/A9PUg8xAEj
— Liz “blue tick” Carr (@thelizcarr) August 10, 2024
Mexican Day of the Dead-themed wedding and ‘Here come the girls’
Liz wrote about their special day for the BBC’s Ouch! Blog (archived here) in 2010.
They took inspiration from the Mexican Day of the Dead festival, because of the people they each had lost along the way before they found each other.
“Since we’ve both lost so many family and disabled friends along the way, we chose this date so that we could celebrate with those from our past and our present. Whilst the living tended to buy us better gifts, the dead guests cost less,” she wrote.
“Our two brides-men wheeled side by side down the aisle to the lyrics Here Come the Girls and escorted by our mums.”
They didn’t allow flash photography because some of the guests had light sensitive epilepsy. And they asked the registrar to request that everyone remain seated throughout the ceremony, since, as a “wheelie” – Liz’s word – events where everyone has to stand up are unbearable.
“You sit there unable to see anything because of the barricade of bums.”
Liz Carr is on Saturday Kitchen Live on Saturday, May 10, at 10am on BBC One.
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