Standing at the urinals in a pub I was midflow when I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. It was a man who wanted to shake my hand for being so funny during a comedy show. After finishing up what I was in the toilets to do, I went to the bar and four or five people commented on my comedic abilities. One wanted to buy me a drink, but this didn’t happen because I was buying a round for several friends and he didn’t love me that much. They asked whether I’d known the performance poet who was on stage reciting his mish-mash of thoughts that he’d shoehorned into bad rhymes.
I hadn’t but what I had done was improve everyone’s evening, apart from the poet’s, by commenting that his poetry would have been well received by an American man sitting wearing a Stetson hat in his office in a British university. The audience thought this was hilarious as, unlike me during my time as an American Studies student, they’d never had their literary endeavours critiqued by a man who had a Stetson and was happy to wear it on Canterbury’s cobbled streets.
Several years later I found myself on stage at a comedy club in South London thanking the academy and my friends and family for their support after I won a stand up award at a new act night.
I wasn’t a new act and had been sitting down, as an audience member, but the first place comedian had gone home so I was crowned the winner for a heckle which the compere declared to be the best he’d heard in his 20 years of doing comedy.
Proving that jokes are never good written down I will recap what happened: A comedian was struggling to make anyone laugh and, when no-one chortled during his bit about seeing funfairs at the sides of roads, he remarked that there must be lots of funfair fans in. His first proper laugh came after I shouted out that there was a funfair in Blackheath.
Then, seemingly delighted that the audience was responding, he asked me whether I’d ever been. I replied “No, but I’ve walked past.” Laughter swirled around the room and the crowd laughed as if they had been waiting for that moment all their lives.
I was reminded of these comedic moments this week when I visited a comedy club on the Thames. It was the first time I’d been there for maybe 15 years or so.
And, like I’ve been doing a lot recently, it led me to thinking how much life has changed between then and now.
I’m still friends with everyone who was at the night 15 years ago, and now have even more friends. I’ve achieved my dream of working on national papers and now have my own home in a town I never dreamed I’d end up in.
And, 15 years ago I never dreamed I’d have incurable bowel cancer in my 40s.
People still tell me I should be a stand up comedian but nowadays it isn’t just self-doubt and stage fright that holds me back from doing it as a second job when I’m not being tough on news, tough on the causes of news.
These days I’m held back because it is primarily an evening job. It’s a role where you have to travel to clubs and pubs in the arse end of nowhere to perform in small rooms for little to no money.
It’s a role where you have to be as awake and alert as possible to remember jokes you scrawled on a piece of paper while dreaming of a better life.
It’s a role that wouldn’t co-exist well with my second job of fighting cancer – because that one makes me feel really tired so if I am awake past 9pm then it usually means I’ve slept for most of the afternoon to charge my batteries.
Nowadays most of my comedic moments happen in my hospital’s day unit while I have chemotherapy and do my best to put the fun into cancer.
It’s a tough job which is sometimes made easier by some unintentional Charlie Chaplin-style slapstick like a few weeks ago when within five minutes of arriving I’d spilled overfizzed Dr Pepper on the floor and then also managed to drop half a pack of Mini Cheddars and is sometimes just fuelled by putting a brave face on and “living the dream”.
The dream is more of a nightmare which is why I’m leading the Daily Express’s Cancer Care campaign to ensure all cancer patients have mental health support both during and after their treatment.
It’s an important fight that could secure life-changing care for some of Britain’s most vulnerable people and we won’t give up until that happens.