I’ll spend most of the night in tears but it leaves me full of hope
YOU’VE got to have a laugh because humour gets us through even the darkest times.
There’s an old saying that comedy is tragedy, plus timing.
My stand-up shows are littered with dark things... with a comic twist – bullying in my childhood, being the gay, camp son of a football-obsessed dad, being fat with glasses and braces on my teeth. Everything in my life was so grim I had to laugh my way out of it. Now I’m on the telly, those things I couldn’t stand and was desperate to change have become my calling card.
Tomorrow night I’m hosting Stand Up To Cancer on Channel 4. You don’t get subjects much more serious – but we’ll be laughing and crying our way through. It’s so emotional I spend half the night with a big snot bubble. The producers showed me and my fellow presenters, Adam Hills and Maya Jama, snippets of the films and we were all in bits – and that was just in a sterile office while eating a Pret sandwich.
Seeing them again on the night, with the lighting, music and people with cancer in the audience, will have me bawling. I’ll have to run off stage to take a swig of rosé. But as well as feeling upset, I can’t help feeling full of hope because the British public are so generous. Telethons are on every other week and they still keep giving (I donate too, so I can look down the camera with conviction when I ask viewers to please do the same).
The first year I presented it with Davina McCall I went to bed feeling euphoric because of how much money the public raised. I was absolutely buzzing.
But I woke the next morning to a message that a boy who was then going to come to one of my shows had died that night. That’s the emotional roller-coaster of cancer.
I will be thinking of my friend’s son who lost his voice box to cancer. And how grateful I am that my good friend Andreas survived his cancer. Seeing what they went through, as well as the counselling they needed afterwards, makes me determined to keep raising money.
With Stand Up To Cancer, it is tough changing gear between films and the fun, silly things we’re showing on the night, like Carpool Karaoke with Michael Buble and Celebrity Gogglebox. It’s hard getting that balance, but this year I know we’ve got it just right.
It’s upsetting, exhilarating, heartbreaking, wonderful – all of that wrapped up in a six-hour telethon of live telly.
Sometimes I’m so choked I can’t get my words out.
But it’s an honour to be asked and it’s the least I can do.
‘‘ A boy who was coming to one of my shows died that night