How stand-up comedy has helped me
- Graeme Rayner
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Warning - a long-winded back story follows...
I've always been a joker. My backstory is fairly stereotypical and clichéd. Whilst my childhood is by no means a sob story, there is a degree of trauma to unpack.
I'm the youngest of five kids. My mum left Scotland when I was around 6 weeks old, fleeing a violent, alcoholic husband using money from the local church's emergency fund. She fled to Essex, where her sister lived, and so I was raised there. Mum remarried when I was 4 years old. He wasn't violent or an alcoholic, but he was a pretty unpleasant guy and childhood was no paradise. They split and reconciled a few times during my teens, before finally deciding to divorce right around my GCSEs.
I mucked around a lot at school, and found that often times the best way to feel accepted by my peers was to make them laugh. This means my old school reports often implied that if I put as much effort into my academic studies as I did acting the fool, I'd achieve more.
Somehow I managed good enough grades at my posh grammar school (where I never felt I belonged) to stay on for A-levels, which is where I met the obligatory inspirational teacher (Gordon Scammell - I love that man), having opted to do Theatre Studies, purely because it sounded more fun than almost every other subject. Here I discovered the thrill of performing and creating. I'd always wanted to be in a rock band, and was one of two frontmen for "Pull the Wang", a covers band that did one gig. We smashed it, and ended on a high. We even wrote and devised our own show that we took to Australia for a month long tour!
After A-levels I went to university, the first of my generation in the family to do so. Again, I did Theatre Studies, but I didn't really enjoy the course. I'd been spoiled by how down to earth my A-level teacher was - he was the very opposite of a "luvvie" whereas I felt my university lecturers were pretentious folk who were squarely up their own backsides.
The biggest joy I found was with people outside of my course, and in hosting the weekly quiz night in the university bar, where I would muck around on the mic between rounds and generally entertain myself and my pals. I drank far too much, in fact my wife Karen (who I met in my second year there - her sister was on my course) recently told me she worried I may have had an alcohol problem.
Having graduated, I opted not to purse a career in the arts. I wanted to settle down and so I did what every good arts graduate should do, and got a job in a call centre. Over the years life progressed relatively normally - marriage, mortgage, kids and dogs. My mum died in 2008, when I was 30. I'd lost touch with the step-dad from my youth, and around the same time as mum died I found out my biological father, whom I'd never met, had died too. Mum's brief and brutal battle with breast cancer knocked me for six. Within 2 years I'd had my first profound spell of poor mental health, and ever since my mental health has see-sawed, with long spells on antidepressants and a few attempts at therapy of different sorts.
One upshot of mum dying was me raising money for cancer charities, which I did by running. I started with 10k runs, and then did the Great North Run (again for a cancer charity, but this time in tribute to my wife, who had beaten cervical cancer) and finally the London Marathon. I found running to be really good for my mental health, but not so much for my physical health - I am (to put it bluntly) a fat man. The marathon broke me and I had severe problems with my feet afterwards.
I needed a new challenge. Fate (which I don't believe in) intervened. On a visit to my mum's sister back in Scotland, my uncle John asked me why I'd never tried performing stand-up comedy. I confessed I'd always been worried I'd be rubbish at it. I've always loved being "the funny one" among my mates, and wasn't sure I could cope with dying on my hoop on stage. The canny old bugger had planted a seed though. Within two weeks of that visit, I saw a tweet (from back before Twitter was a bin fire of hate) from someone I had followed due to them being a funny tweeter, Pixels Green. Pixels posted that she'd just made her stand-up debut, so I messaged her and asker her how she'd done it. She explained she'd attended a stand-up course to raise funds for Cancer Research UK. The course was 8 weeks long, and was free, subject to certain conditions (you had to sell ten tickets for the showcase at £25 a ticket and raise a minimum of £50 for the charity - this was how the tutor got paid and the parent company made their money.)
Well, I couldn't not sign up, could I? Thankfully, and entirely coincidentally, a good pal of mine (the excellent performance poet Jem Tovey) had also signed up, so I had a lovely Lancastrian comfort-blanket to keep me company. I spent 8 weeks learning from the excellent tutor/mentor, James Bayes. I wrote and rehearsed my set, and was nervous on the day of the showcase, where I found out that James had put me on last - this felt like pressure! He reassured me, even when I told him that I had tried but failed to cut my set to the required five minutes. He explained that I was on last, and should just do the set as it was, regardless of the length of it. I did my five minutes, plus another six. Wow. The buzz. It lasted a few days, but then I was hungry for more. And I have been gigging ever since.
Since then, I can honestly say stand-up comedy has changed my life. I've found a viable second career that I find remarkably rewarding. I've performed with some of my heroes, and in some amazing places. My mental health has improved. I still have low periods, of course, but I have found that always having a gig to look forward to is a real tonic, and the creative outlet really helps balance my mood. Laughter is great for your mental health - this is proven by actual science, folks - and since I've been working in the stand-up industry I've laughed more than ever before!
I've also found teaching comedy to beginners, as well as mentoring comedians, has been hugely rewarding. I've met some amazing people, some of whom are forging their own path into the world of stand-up comedy, and most of them tell me that they have seen similar benefits in their own lives - improved emotional wellbeing, reduced isolation, increased confidence are just a few of the benefits.
So how has stand-up comedy helped me? Well, I've met amazing people, some of whom are now life-log friends. I've found a profession that fulfils me creatively and emotionally more than any job I've ever done. I've discovered a way to channel my thoughts and feelings to entertain others and get paid while doing it!
What are the downsides, I hear you ask? Well, initially I though, naïvely, that I had found my "tribe", but I have learned that the stand-up comedy community is a microcosm of society - there are just as many people in it who will rub you up the wrong way, or who you will rub up the wrong way. Also, it is (literally) a gig economy. I've been plugging away since 2018 and the dream of giving up the day job is still just a dream. Finally, it can be all encompassing. Once you've started out as a comedian, your view of the world changes - everything becomes possible material. Unchecked, this can take a toll on your relationships or cause you to make bad choices about what to say, when and how. In this respect, I've found having advice from more experienced folk is hugely important.
On the whole, the positives hugely outweigh the negatives, and faced with the same decision back in 2018 I'd definitely still ick up a pen, and then a microphone, and take to the stage. That 8 weeks of learning how to make a start in comedy changed my life, and I'll always be grateful to Gordon Scammell for putting me on a stage at school, to my uncle John for planting the seed, to Pixels Green for pointing the way, to Jem Tovey for holding my hand and to James Bayes for being an excellent tutor and mentor.
Since then, there have been missteps and disappointments, but comedy has actually been the way to bounce back from them, and I feel blessed to be a tiny, unknown and moderately successful part of this world.
So there you have it, a cheesy, self-indulgent and longwinded account of why I love, and am grateful, for what stand--up comedy has given me. It has been, as I often say (and this is not medical advice) better for me than any anti-depressant or therapy I've ever had. I bloody love it.
I'm really looking forward to leading my first course for Gags For Good, which starts at the end of February 2026. I really believe in what we're trying to do, and the power of comedy. If you fancy giving stand-up a go, maybe we can help?
