Multi-faceted performance poet Joy France cut her teeth on stage at Write Out Loud open-mic nights in Wigan. After winning a succession of poetry slams, she appeared on Nationwide TV ads and even on posters in the building society shop windows.

In recent years she has run a creative space at Affleck’s in Manchester, an emporium of independent traders, where she encourages people to explore their own creativity. She is also known to don a panda mask at the drop of a hat, when staging impromptu performances. 

A couple of years ago, in another screeching career gear change, she started taking part in ‘battle raps’ - and somewhat inevitably became known as the “battling granny”. A documentary about all this, Joy Uncensored, made by Northern Heart Films, recently won the audience award at Hebden Bridge film festival.

After a host of media appearances Joy, a retired teacher, found herself talking once more about all this on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live, with the programme’s theme” finding your feet in strange new worlds”. She explained that after a shy adulthood and early adulthood, “in my 50s I found my voice and my confidence”.

So much so, that she wanted to show the young men who generally take part in the testosterone-fuelled world of battle rap that “a short, fat, older lady could give them a run for their money”.

When she “went into battle, I genuinely believed I was stepping into this horrible world. I hadn’t done much research.” Instead, she discovered that “so many people in that scene are lovely … they were so welcoming to me.”

She added although not many women take part in battle rap, “when I battle, I insist I do it for real, that the battler doesn’t go easy on me”.

Saturday Live presenter the Rev Richard Coles asked Joy if growing up in Salford had something to do with her ability to mix it with tough-talking males, but she demurred: “As a child growing up  I was the quietest … I would just shrink and hide under a rock.”

You can listen to the programme here 

PHOTOGRAPH: NORTHERN HEART FILMS