Our Princess Warrior

Did you have a mid-life epiphany inspired by a comedy icon on your 2026 bingo card? No? Me neither. But as a forty-nine-year-old woman deep in the miseries of perimenopause and other half-century horrors, I’ve been seeking a clearer vision of myself and where I might want to go in the coming decades — and my progressive lenses certainly aren’t cutting it. Aging while female is a helluva trip, and since most of us are lugging around plenty of baggage, there aren’t many maps that show the way to a happier, more hopeful second act. Enter Mary Walsh with her memoir, Brassy Bit of Aging Crumpet.

Despite the cheek and boldness of the title — which conjures an image of Walsh’s legendary comedy character Marg Delahunty, Princess Warrior, with her plastic sword and glitter-adorned bodysuit — this gathering of deeply personal stories sees Walsh take stock of her fears, her failings, her pain, and her pride. Rather than a linear narrative chronicling her life and career as one of Canada’s most beloved comedians, Brassy Bit of Aging Crumpet is a chronologically connected collection of essays and musings. Topics run the gamut: Her Newfoundland upbringing, steeped in familial dysfunction and Catholic guilt. The trials and triumphs of life as a cherished but sometimes controversial political satirist on This Hour Has 22 Minutes. The daunting challenges we all face in today’s Trump-sullied world.

Walsh wastes no time telling us who she is and what we’re in for. There are no Nora Ephron–style sparkling witticisms about aging necks here. “I am neither blithe nor breezy, nor bouncy at all,” she writes. “I’m more like a loud thud.” Oh, thank God, Mary. Me too. What she lacks in breeze and bounce, Walsh makes up for with the kind of blunt-force delivery that those of us who come from hard people and hard places are prone to developing — the kind that is often met with squirmy giggles and pity-tinged smiles from anyone whose nature or nurture did not include gallows humour as an ancestral survival strategy. This comedic sensibility is one that I keenly appreciate, even if it does occasionally run afoul of social graces or rub some people the wrong way.

As Walsh walks us through a childhood rife with rejections, confusions, and a pervasive sense of liminality and abandonment, we’re privy to loads of her family’s dirty laundry. While there are certainly some unique facets to her particular origin story — like being given away at eight months to be raised by two spinster aunts and a disabled uncle, while her seven siblings lived next door with her parents — many of the struggles Walsh wrestles with are all too familiar to anyone from a working-class East Coast background. “Most of us had grown up in some sort of dysfunctional home,” Walsh says of her friends and fellow performers in “Codco,” the chapter about their first touring comedy troupe. “And of course we brought all that dysfunction to the table.” What is unique is the candour and clarity with which she reflects on her attitudes and experiences as she tells these stories. 

Although faintly self-flagellatory at times, Walsh’s relentless honesty is very genuine and very human. “Perhaps everyone suffers from these ailments of the heart,” she notes. “But they don’t always cop to it, do they?” Cop to it she does, and her frankness doesn’t end with her own psychological complexities. If accounts of pervy politicians, techniques for faking orgasms, or the words “vaginal dryness” make you blanch, here is some princess warrior advice: Toughen up, buttercup. Women over forty don’t have time for such preciousness. There are things that need saying, and Mary Walsh is not ashamed to say them.

It might come as a surprise to learn that someone who made a TV career gallivanting around town dressed as an ornery octogenarian or ambushing politicians while sporting a red felt and gold glitter one-piece was often mortified by the whole endeavour. Even as these antics had audiences around the country laughing their heads off, Walsh was internally spinning. As she acknowledges in the chapter “22 Minutes,” it was, ironically, a deep sense of humiliation that got her through those ambushes. “In the midst of a shame spiral,” she writes, “it would occur to me that I was already at the bottom, what with my clown makeup and ridiculous costume, and so, ‘What odds?’ I’d think, ‘Shag it, I might as well go for it.’ What did I have to lose? Certainly not any modicum of self-respect.”

The essay structure safeguards against a sense of tonal whiplash, as Walsh moves between her own history — including her struggles with alcoholism, which are mercifully neither minimized nor overwrought — and the bigger fish we must collectively fry, such as climate change and the relentless chaos south of the border. The chapter “Untitled,” in particular, is a bit of a dog’s breakfast of current affairs and commentaries on everything from COVID‑19 to colonialism. But Walsh adeptly serves us a dog’s breakfast that is both meaty and saucy.

Apart from the hope Walsh gives to middle-aged women like me, there are other noteworthy points of delight in this book. Brassy Bit of Aging Crumpet makes liberal use of asterisked footnotes to expand on ideas — like the history of Newfoundland — or offer cheeky asides on the author’s political and personal perspectives. On occasion, these remarks can be a little distracting. But, for the most part, they are worthwhile elaborations on context and culture — and many are certainly good for a chuckle. The language is also a constant treat, as Walsh uses a slew of entertaining phrases to great effect. “Wind that was fierce enough to rip the features right off your face” and hunger so intense “her stomach thought her throat was cut” serve as reminders that Newfoundlanders have an undeniably evocative way with words. Maybe there are a tad too many things “up on bust,” but when we’re talking hormones, people pleasing, and climate anxiety, that particular expression does ring true.

Brassy Bit of Aging Crumpet sees Walsh become the happier, healthier subject of her own life, rather than the object of somebody else’s. For those of us finally coming to grips with the fact that we are not meant to be everyone’s cup of tea, this book shows that we can hold on to our hard-won humour and fierceness and still arrive in a place of peace. Which honestly sounds like a lot more fun. It’s certainly where I would like to end up.