Rosy Barnes

Rosy is a young(ish) argumentative woman trapped in the body of a young(ish) argumentative woman.

Born and brought up in Edinburgh to a Welsh mother and an English father, she suffered abuse as a child for not having a Scottish accent. She now lives with this trauma by, in turn, bullying every English person she meets for being anti-Scottish. (Some people think this evidence of Stockholm Syndrome.)

She studied Fine Art and English Literature at Exeter University and then went on to the University of East Anglia to obtain an MA in Theatre Directing. There she discovered her complete lack of talent at theatre directing. But they gave her the MA anyway. They’re kind like that. 

After university she set off to Dublin where she formed a theatre company with two friends. Having done everything from administration, costume and poster design to building full-size sets in her kitchen, she finally persuaded the company (at gun-point) that they really should produce one of her plays and Bimbo - a comedy for puppets and actors - was born. It toured Ireland and Scotland, winning acclaim from critics and audiences alike. 

‘She was an absolute nightmare to work with,’ says Sinead the puppet, who recently launched a solo career as a piece of freelance upholstery. ‘Total autocrat. Never gave us any artistic freedom. She even stuck us upside down in binbags whilst the actors sat around us in the pub smoking – no regard for our health and safety. Doesn’t she realise we are made of foam?’ 

Fed up of working with such primadonnas (and nothing to do with the gun incident), Rosy returned to Edinburgh where she took various worthy jobs before sitting down to write a comic novel – Sadomasochism for Accountants.

‘I started off with an image: a man completely naked except for a black eye mask and started wondering what sort of person he might be in real life’

Rosy’s interests include computer programmers (she knows she’s eccentric), dogs and arguing about stuff she knows nothing about on the internet.

She lives happily in Edinburgh in a hovel of her own creation with her very own Uber-Geek, his beloved collection of broken computers and various piles of rubbish that inconsiderately refuse to tidy themselves away. 

Ideally, she would like to be rich enough so that if things got too messy, she could just move house.