I’ve never been a fan of things where people are made to feel a bit foolish
cruise ship,’ I kept saying.
The contestants go up some steps at the back when they leave, but it wasn’t quite clear where they had to go and, at one point, people started going the wrong way and they’d have to walk back.
I love all those things, where you see the behind-the-scenes of it, and see things going just a little bit wrong. It’s all about human beings just being human beings; sometimes we’re not perfect, and that’s part of the delight.
Sometimes, you’ll get people who are so lovely but are just a bit shy about buzzing in, and so other people will be overtaking them, and you go, ‘Oh, I just really want them to get at least some points’.
Between the rounds, I’m like, ‘Come on you can do it’, gee them up a little bit.
You want people at home to feel like they’re watching something nice. I’ve never been a fan of things where people are made to feel a bit foolish or made to feel a bit silly. I like it when people seem to be having a nice time all together; that’s always my approach.
I wanted to talk about feelings and experiences I’ve had and, no matter how foolish I felt at the time, I thought, ‘Well, if I talk about them, then they lose their power, they lose their sting’.
And I hope that anybody else who might have been through something similar would feel the same.
Social media likes to portray everybody as so cool and so perfect and glamorous in every step of their lives, but in truth, everybody’s fallen over and everybody’s made a fool of themselves one way or another.
I tried to write as specifically as possible about how things aren’t always tied up with a bow. Even things like coming out – those were big moments for me in my memory, and they did have a payoff, in a sense, but it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, and then everything was fine after that’.
Sometimes, we get told stories where everything is quite linear, and everything gets sorted out at the end – and when we don’t live up to that in our real lives, we feel like we’re not doing life right.
And I think it’s very important to not let people feel like that.
I’m very excited! I hope there will be
It’s all about human beings just being human beings; sometimes we’re not perfect, and that’s part of the delight
a sense of real celebration in the way that we go and see live arts and go and do stuff.
What I’ve always loved about stand-up is the fact that it’s an event that happens in that space, at that time, and we all laugh and celebrate and are together. I suspect that those shows will be all the more exciting for everybody involved.
Somebody said to me years ago, ‘Nerves are just the flipside of excitement’ – and I think that’s true.
Sometimes we are conditioned to fear something that we’re excited about and in truth, why not just live it and love it and just have a great time?