Janice Connolly

Janice Connolly BEM (born 7 August 1953) is an English actress, comedian and artistic director. She runs the Birmingham-based group Women and Theatre and performs stand-up comedy as her character Mrs Barbara Nice. Connolly has also appeared in Coronation Street, That Peter Kay Thing, Phoenix Nights, Max and Paddy's Road To Nowhere, Thin Ice and Dead Man Weds. In 2017, Connolly was awarded a British Empire Medal in the New Years Honours list for services to community arts in the West Midlands. In 2022, she began appearing in the BBC soap opera Doctors as Rosie Colton.

Connolly was born in Stockport on 7 August 1953. She left to study drama at Birmingham Polytechnic (now Birmingham City University). After graduating, she became a drama teacher and a social worker for Barnardos.

Connolly was part of the Birmingham independent music scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She performed with the Surprises and the Evereadies regularly in Moseley at the Fighting Cocks. Singles championed by John Peel included "Jeremy Thorpe is Innocent" and "Martian Girlfriend".She then became known for her character Barbara Nice - a caricature of a middle aged housewife and mother of five from Kings Heath, Birmingham. Her act is heavily reliant on interaction with the audience, for example, acting as an agony aunt to the audience. Connolly was performing as Barbara Nice at the Palace nightclub in Levenshulme in 1997 when spotted by Peter Kay at the finals of the Manchester Evening News New Act of the Year. She went on to appear in several of his television shows. She played Holy Mary in Phoenix Nights, a part Dave Spikey claimed he wrote with her in mind and which was reprised in Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere written by Kay and Paddy McGuinness.