Musings arguments and gig reports from your favourite Goth lesbian transsexual vegan recovering alcoholic and drug addict sceptic rationalist atheist comedian chameleon and caricature.

Tuesday 4 March 2014

If I opened my heart there'd be no room for air.

I sat up all night on Sunday watching the Oscars, I studied film and old habits die hard.  Most Stand-up comics wanted to rock stars, I didn't, I wanted to be a director.

After I left university I took an idea that I'd had and extended it into a feature film and spent 2 years trying to write it and get it made, I got training, I got the Prince's Trust to agree to fund me if I could get the rest of the funding in place, I wrote a business plan that made the bank agree to part fund me and then...  Well then I gave up, because to be frank the film I'd written was shit.  It was awful, it was wish fulfilment bollocks, my way of dealing with the bullying I'd faced at school, the alcoholic paranoia that I was going through and a way to focus my rage.

It was a few months after that when I was working a shitty data entry job in my home town of Chorley and thinking "Is this it?  Is this what I do now for 48 weeks a year for the next 50 years until I retire and then have a few years to myself before I die?  Fuck.  That."  and I started looking for a new outlet, and comedy, the one thing I really wanted but I thought I couldn't ever do became the last thing on my list of creative outlets and I gave it a go.

These days I make my living making people laugh and I'm really good at it, and that's why I can stay up all night on a Sunday without having to worry about getting up for work the next day.