It's not every day that you meet an Artistic Director who’s been in the driving seat for as long, or has been as successful, as Emma Taylor. She is best known as Head Producer for The Guinness World Record Holder for the longest running comedy show and, it’s no mean feat that Taylor has kept NewsRevue on wheels at The Canal Café Theatre, West London, for almost 25 years.

What most people are not aware of is that when she was growing up in Leicestershire, her father was a notorious gangster.  It’s not very common that you hear of a theatre maker with this background from an industry increasingly filled by young artists so often financed by their parents' corporate jobs.  Born in Martonvásár just outside of Budapest, her father was an active revolutionary during The Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet Union in 1956: “He was captured, imprisoned and brutally tortured by the Soviet Union and eventually escaped to Vienna, Austria. Eventually, my father moved to the UK, which is where his association with The Hells Angels began,” she recalls.

As a child, Taylor never thought her dad’s connection with this motorcycle club heavily linked with organised crime was out of the ordinary: “My dad’s friends were kind of normal to me, even if they had names like Champagne Charlie and Flick Knife Fred. It was only when I went to school that I realized not everyone experiences that level of violence or police presence in their childhood,” Taylor tells me.

“I think I’d always sort of craved, an interesting, exciting life, just because I’d grown up with all these stories from my dad,” she reflects, as she is about to celebrate the 25 year milestone in her career this year. Taylor will always find it curious how the arts entered her life as well as her brother's, who performs as the lead singer in a band. “I guess the theatre industry satisfied that craving for exhilaration in a safer way than crime. My parents were very working class, but my mum always took me to The Little Theatre in Leicester,” she says.

Growing up young and exposed to crime in her youth has given Taylor the vital resilience required to be an artistic director:  “I think it gave me a lot of skills which apply well to the stage. Such as the need to cope with wearing all the hats as producer, director and performer, often all at once. Both crime and theatre require you to pretend to be different people in different environments.”

Her work at NewsRevue ultimately attempts to identify with its audience: “NewsRevue is all about how we can soften the blows that life so often gives us. Through political comedy, it's a way of fighting back against political institutions, holding power to account, and making people laugh, of course.” For her 25^th anniversary at The Canal Cafe Theatre, Taylor will be celebrating at The Club for Acts and Actors in Covent Garden and she’s feeling that extra little bit nostalgic:  “I remember a childhood memory from when I was a little girl and trying to get away from the difficulties at home. There was this bit of raised bank in our back garden made of grass and I vividly remember saying to myself, one day I would love to have my little own theatre.”