The Comedian's Comedian Podcast - Sara Pascoe Returns

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Exactly 500 episodes later one of the UK’s most acclaimed comics, Sara Pascoe, returns to the show. Fresh off her latest tour, I Am A Strange Gloop, we discuss:how comedians become addicted to rejectionthe imbalance of what the circuit means for different comedianswhy there should be a workshop for comics to survive panel showsthe impossible balance between truth and funny in stand-upwhether using writers in comedy is “cheating”and we find out if Sara Pascoe is happy…Join the Insiders Club at Patreon.com/ComComPod where you can instantly WATCH the full episode and get access to exclusive extras where discuss the hidden world of corporate gigs including:why corporates can feel impossible from the startthe different standards held between public and private showsand we unpack the survival tactics used by pro comics on the circuit👉 Sign up to the ComComPod Mailing List and follow the show on Instagram, YouTube & TikTok.Catch Up with Sara: You can see Sara Pascoe for one night only at this year's Edinburgh Fringe at the Underbelly on the 5th August. Find all the info at sarapascoe.co.uk. You can keep-up-date with Sara on Instagram, @sara.pascoe.Support our independently produced Podcast from only £3/month at Patreon.com/ComComPod:✅ Instant access to full video and ad-free audio episodes✅ Exclusive extra content with Sara✅ Early access to new episodes where possible✅ Exclusive membership offerings including weekly(ish) Stu&AsPLUS you’ll get access to the full back catalogue of extras you can find nowhere else!Everything I'm up to: Come and see me LIVE ON TOUR, find out all the info and more at stuartgoldsmith.com/comedy. Discover my comedy about the climate crisis, for everyone from activists to CEOs, at stuartgoldsmith.com/climate.Other things: Find out more abotu Lee Kyle's book at imleekyle.com.Get in touch: If you’re listening and thinking ‘I’d love to work with ComComPod on getting something out there’ or ‘there’s someone you should absolutely have on’ - drop us an email at [e-mail]! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stuart here. You can go to Stuart Goldsmith.com slash comedy for tickets to my national tour. That's right. I'm taking my second ever climate comedy show. It's called Canary. I'm taking it to the Edinburgh Festival for the last two weeks of August at the Monkey Barrel, Cabaret Voltaire. And I shall see you there in the last two weeks of August. And then it's a national tour for this guy. Cambridge, Glasgow, Oxford, Manchester, Cardiff, Maidenhead, Sheffield and Birmingham, culminating in my biggest ever tour show at Bristol Old Vic. Stuart Goldsmith.com slash comedy for all your tickets. Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Stuart Goldsmith. This is the Comedians, comedian podcast. And today, exactly 500 episodes after her first appearance, we welcome back one of the UK's most acclaimed comics and someone who's mind and whose comedy mind I find fascinating. I love the way that she is so articulate. I love her kind of erudite and learned approach to comedy, which doesn't get in the way of her being really, really funny. She is fresh off finishing her latest tour. I am a strange gloop. We welcome Sarah Pascoe back to the show.

Now, there were technical issues. We recorded this a few months ago initially, and then we had some technical issues. We got like a solid hour and 45, and it was brilliant, and I was devastated when it became apparent that that version had been corrupted. But Sarah very, very kindly agreed to find another time to come and re-record.

So this is, as you will hear, we tried not to sort of hit any of the same stuff. We hit similar topics here and there, but I don't think it's any kind of, we're not spending a lot of time going, hey, this is what we said last time. But if you are in the Insiders Club, then sometime later this month, not this week, but sometime later this month, we will release the not good enough but bearable if you're a super fan audio of the original episode. So that's like an hour and 45 that's going straight to the Patrons. You can be one of them. I'll tell you more about that in a second in case you don't know. So this is the re-record with crystal clear sound quality. But there is, not only are there extras from this episode,

if you're in the Insiders Club, you can hear if you so choose, and I would choose if I were you, because it's banging. You can hear the entire original episode in sort of an attempt at cleaned up audio. I'm sure Callum will have done very well with that, but it isn't the quality you've come to expect. Right. In the first half of this redo Sarah Pasco returns episode, we will talk about how comedians can become addicted to rejection. We'll talk about the imbalance of what the circuit means for different comedians, how comedy awards don't guarantee careers. We'll talk about whether using writers in comedy is cheating and why there should be a workshop for comics to survive and thrive in panel shows.

I'm amazed no one's doing one of them already. Surely someone's going to do that before long. This is real good gear. I think you're going to absolutely love this one. There's never been a better time to support us. We're an independently produced podcast. There's any three of us. Susie on the Logs, evil producer Callum and myself.

And for £3 each, well, not for £3 each. You can pay £3 each. For £3 a month, there's basically a pound each per month. That's fair, I think. You will get, I can't say that because we do not divide the money equally. but we do divide the money. So you will get ad-free access to all of the full video. This one was videoed on Zoom.

Some of them have filmed live. And you get all the audio as well. 15 minutes of exclusive extras with Sarah from this episode. You get the new format, Stu-N-A every week, ish. I will say ish, but I do get around to them. And also a warm, fuzzy feeling. So all of that said, you can go to a comedian. Note, you can get a Patreon.com.

slash comcom pod for all of that. But now, at long last, here's Sarah Pascoe Brackett's Returns. You'd just had like a breakthrough in therapy just before we spoke to each other. I was right at the end of my tour like going into the last couple of weeks. So it was intense. It was scintillating. We were both finding new things, new ideas anyway. And then it sounded like we were underwater.

the recording. Yes. Yes. So the thing now, there's a couple of mistakes I'd like to not make. And one of them is to try to recreate that interview. Yes. Because then you end up going, and do you remember, like it's annoying for the listener because we keep saying, oh, that's what you said last time. I think we need to allow for a certain amount of that to happen. Sure. I think probably we should just, I've got like a little list of some things I remember us, are a half remember us talking about. I didn't want to get too, like it's hard to listen back to anyway. Yes. So, um, um, so, um, um, um, I think what had just happened and something that kind of bookended it quite neatly was you had just done the new Mock the week on a different channel. Wow. Okay. That's where it was. And I think I asked you, was it a different experience doing it now compared to the stress it was when you were on the way up now now that you're very established and confident. Was it a whole different ballgame and a lot easier? Well, that's what I'd hoped, hadn't I? I had thought the reason I said yes to it wasn't because it's loads and loads of money or needs need the exposure or anything. anything like that, I thought this will be fun to sit there in that chair and do it, make some jokes that you've written about the news without the pressure of, I'm trying to establish myself. This is an audition for a future career.

I thought it would be a lot less nerve-wracking and that perhaps I would enjoy it in some way that I hadn't the first time round. And guess what? I didn't. It was really, really nerve-wracking. And that show, because you have to produce so much for the entirety of the record, all the way up to the end, which is scenes I'd like to see, it's really stressful.

And I didn't sit there feeling like I deserve this. This is a victory lap. I'm so lucky to just sit here and laugh with my friends. I just kept shriveling up inside myself when I said something that wasn't funny enough or I had an idea that didn't really go anywhere. It was a damp squib. And I thought, oh, it's me that hasn't changed.

It still really matters. With all of us, all comedians, I think that's the true test of our species. Does it hurt you when you say something that you think is funny and know, laughs, yes, it scalds and burns and it's very shameful and that hasn't changed. And then now, having done four episodes of that series, I can absolutely say it was just the kind of roller coaster that it was when I first did it in 2016 and that some of the records

went better than others, usually because the audience laugh a bit more. So you gain a bit of confidence and then you're a bit more experimental. You take some risks and that pays off and you feel proud of yourself. And sometimes you feel much shyer and you're looking at notes on the table. in front of you going, this is all terrible. But why did I think this was my angle? I think I'm noting your use of the word scald. Like it really, that's such a evocative word.

Oh, God, I did a new material thing last night with a bunch of like 10 minutes I'd written that day or substantially written that day. And so, like, it was the same feeling of like, surely this was good. I had so much confidence in a bit and then it bombs. And that's not even televised. Well, Stu, the other day I had that same experience. I did two new material nights. And is it the same thing at the second one

because I thought the first audience were wrong. That's how much I believed in this bit. And it's about lush. And I took all these lush products that I've bought and then emptied and then keep them because you can recycle them. And they have stickers on them. I'm sure you use lush sometimes, do you?

They've got those stickers on them of the person who made it. Okay. And I thought this was such great observational stuff. And it was like eight minutes. And so at the first time, I just thought the audience just the wrong crowd for this. But the second one were definitely the right crowd. And then halfway through I had to say, I'm just a woman holding some litter.

I realized it wasn't a bit at all. It was just, it was only observational if you were me in the bath over thinking what the lush factory must be like. It isn't stand-up comedy. But it's, but it is stand-up comedy as well, isn't it? I mean, I don't know how many more times you might want to try that bit because I'm never trying to. I've recycled the bits now. I've recycled the litter. That's nice. That's nice.

Yeah. The membrane is so thin, isn't it, between being a person observing a thing just for you in the moment and having a thought that's like, oh, this could work and then discovering that this doesn't work. Not that it can't necessarily, but that it doesn't. There's an amazing Grimm's brother tale on exactly what you're saying. It's called Auntie Toothake.

I'm sure it's the Grims Brothers, or if not it's Hans Christian Anderson. It's one of those story. teller people, auntie toothache, and it's all about how everyone has poetry in them, but for some people, it's only enough for them. Oh, God, that's great. Yes. So everyone is a poet. It's just that some people, their poetry will talk to thousands, to millions of people,

and for others of us, it's just for you or maybe your auntie or your mum and dad. That's one of the things I have most, I mean, obviously it has a sort of slightly, it's got a bit of an edge to it but that is one of the things that is most in tune with the values of this podcast that I've ever heard. I love that and that's part of why I'm so like I wasn't prepared to put the previous episode out

as like a sort of rubbish potato quality sound thing. I'm so grateful to you for redoing it because I think you are just one of the most erudite comics and there is such compassion in the way you talk about comedy as being a thing that is there for everyone. It just maybe it's only enough for oneself. That's beautiful.

Yeah, I think in terms of everyone's careers, that's why I think if anyone wants to try stand-up comedy, the act of trying it is so important. And then how we then content ourselves with where we reach. I do think part of that journey is going, it's so democratic. If I'm putting, if I'm at every gig you're putting, you're putting your product out there, or you're putting yourself out there,

the audience decide whether they want to come and see you again. That's up to them. That's the bit you can't control. And it must be, maybe that's why comics can end up becoming embittered, because if they're putting something up there that they think people want to see that isn't necessarily the song they really truly want to be singing, and then people opt out of that, that must be incredibly painful. Or I think our industry does, gaslight isn't quite the right term, because I don't think it's done with malicious intent.

But I think sometimes people win awards or are top. things in meetings or have agents say things to them and they go, okay, that's true about me. And then their career doesn't reflect it in the same. I mean, I know someone who was told that he was the voice of his generation. And if you say that to a 21 year old who's just sort of breaking out of the open mic circuit, he will expect big things to happen because voice of a generation isn't, you know, you're quite funny. That's saying the world needs to hear what you're going to say. That makes you visualize, you know, I'm going to, there are people who are off the curb, I think you were told they're the next Lee Evans.

And that does make you think you're going to sell out the O2. Sure. And that can lead to disappointment, I think for everyone. I think sometimes that's what's hard. If you've had a journey that's been less traditional and you've had tougher gigs, like that in the Steve Martin book, if you've had tougher gigs early on, I think it does make you appreciate any success, but know that it could be fleeting afterwards.

Going back to that mock the week experience or those those, those, four experiences now. Do you find that there are people that you see doing that show who don't appear to be scolded when a joke doesn't fire? Or do you, like, what do you think are the kind of the pantheon of possible responses to making offers? Because I often think of improv people are just used to the idea of throwing out offers. And that's different, isn't it?

Because you end up, you give loads away and something catches or clowns, you offer and you offer and you offer. Something catches it works, you do it more. And that's a very different structure, isn't it, to being the sort of comic that you are, where you have got a thing that is either a deeply held belief, a thing you passionately want to express, or a funny, quirky little observation that's about you.

They're kind of preloaded. So what are the different sorts of responses that you see on TV shows like mock where people are putting stuff out? Well, I'd say most of the time, when you're seeing someone do their first ever appearance, I think they definitely will have worked very, very hard. Usually they'll have done a gig to try out some of the material, especially there's big stuff in the news.

We had stuff with like Keir Stama and Peter Mandelson. That's definitely the kind of thing that you can write some stand-up about and go and try it a gig as it's happening and then have it ready for mock the week. So they come in very confident. And if the first time you talk, no one laughs. and then none of the established comics meet you, look at you. So like no one's meeting your eye. No one sort of gives you a little sort of like, it's fine kind of look.

You watch them sometimes not speak for 20 or 30 minutes or just speak a lot less. And so while they look okay, you can tell that inside there's a crestfallenness of, I better be really sure what I'm going to say is good, which is the wrong attitude. The best way to get through it, but I don't know how you get there without. some experience. I don't know how you can just be confident enough. The robustness to go, I'll say another thing and I'll say another thing. And one of them will be funny.

And that's the one that will go in the edit as the first time I spoke. It's the odd double brain of you're not doing a gig. You're making a TV program. And this is brand new stuff. And it's rhythm and what you've come afterwards and what other people are doing at the time that you speak. There are so many variables. And I don't know how you get good at that.

I wish that they did workshops for young comics. The BBC, when it used to have more panel shows, what it never invested in, especially when they wanted to be more representative and more diverse, they never, ever just did loads and loads of run-throughs, not as auditions, but to give people a go. You know, give people on my level a go of hosting and show how different that is so that you can empathise why a host can't always help if you've been interrupted or come back to you if time is moving on. You suddenly understand, oh, okay, it wasn't about me. They've got this other job and they've got a voice in their ear.

And we've got enough on that section. and we don't need your input, that kind of stuff. And then it would allow new comics just to sit in those chairs and talk over each other and find out it's so different to stand up. If someone interrupts you, you might have a great way of getting back to your punchline, but you have to know that from trying it. You have to know sometimes that you have to drop things halfway through that you do a setup and someone else's sort of drop in

is better than the punchline you'd written. And then they get a round of applause. But if you learned all that in a safe environment, not thinking, I really want them to rebook me. This is going to change my, if not my months, my year in a lower pressure. Absolutely. Then when they did it when it was filmed, they would feel more robust. They would be like, oh, I remember this feeling.

I can get around it like this so I can bring it back. Or a producer gave me feedback afterwards and I now know, don't do that. Yes, yes, absolutely. I've heard that before. I think Rosie Jones might have said something about seeing people do callbacks to a joke that she already knows is going to get cut. So it's just kind of, like, do you know what? She's worked in TV production,

so I suppose she sort of effectively had done a lot of those workshop things. In terms of your drive as an artist, in terms of your creative drive, you'll need to express yourself. How does a show like Mock serve you? Well, it's... Catherine Ryan, when we did this first episode,

said something really brilliant, and I heard it through a journalist who was interviewing all of the people. I'm pretty sure it was Catherine because she said it's like exercising a muscle and I absolutely think that's what it is like and I think if you think about a tour show as being long distance running

in that you train and train and train for it and then it's a really long race. Every show, 90 minutes and maybe a bit longer but essentially what you're doing is pacing yourself and you've spent a year and a half working towards it whereas Mock the Week is a crossfit class

where your heart is just not going to stop beating and you're going on to different machines different machine, different machine, and it probably isn't the way that your body loves to exercise. It's a shock to my system. But I also think it's really useful to do it. I think the reason I'm back there, I had a big talk with Steen, my husband, after the mock the weeks, reflecting on it, going, why am I putting myself through this? A lot of the people that I did mock the week at the same time as, and I texted Josh Whittaker actually, and I'm not talking out of turn so I can sort of name. And I said to him, would you come back and do mock?

Because he's someone I loved sitting next to. He laughs at other comics. I think he's so funny. And he was good to go on tangents within things. And he said, it's just too much prep. And I thought, it is. It's so much prep. You have to read lots of the news and you have to know what's going on and stuff gets

dropped and stuff happens on the day. And there are the scenes you'd like to see where you do have to think a lot about flyers that come through your letterbox and unlikely titles for blockbusters. And I thought, and I said to Stee, I don't know if it's wanting to learn, wanting to be better at something I'm not, that doesn't come naturally to me. Or is that a form of masochism? Is it actually I'm there because it makes me feel uncomfortable and I'm not good enough? And I must in some level enjoy feeling crap about myself.

And actually the rest of my life is pretty great. So I've like, no, I'm going to sit back on the week and feel bad at comedy again. Tell me more about that. Because I totally, I feel like I can accept why someone would think. like that. I think there are certain things I've done that feel like that. I don't know why. There's something about rejection. And I would probably, before Steen, say this was true of my love life as well. There's something about someone not wanting you that makes you want it so much. And you do, and part of growing up is going, do you only want it because they don't want you?

And that's not fair for me to say because actually mock the week do book me. So it's not like they don't want me. No, sure. But there's an element of discomfort. because I'm not quite, it's not quite what I would do on QI or a different show. And definitely it's not what I do in my stand-up comedy. It's a little corner of it. So, and I used to have this, and I don't know if you have this due about circuit comics when I was starting out. And I was really lucky I got on TV very early.

I got on the radio very early. And then I was doing gigs like trying out at the comedy store. So let's say the comedy store is very much. And at that time, stalwart mainly men. men much older than me who'd done three decades and were doing a 20 that was so watertight and the rhythm of it so funny so many applause breaks and then I was going on and what I was doing they were absolutely right to consider it not comedy as they knew it okay so let's say that if that's fair to everyone and also by the way this is this is a

of amazingly deft language you're using here. Yes. I totally get you. But sometimes it went really well. He was the sort of the odd thing about me, say I'd got two or three years in. I would either go better than those men because I was weirder and different and the audience went for it or it would go much, much worse than those men. I had no consistency.

And in terms of what I was offering the audience, it was either like, oh my God, this girl's doing this now or it was, oh my God, what is that girl doing? But either way, it's taken such a long time. time for me and I don't know if it still has left me for me to try and want to convince those men I am good enough to gig with them. There are certain men who if I was booked with them now, if I saw a line up, you know, here's your gig on Friday and I looked at it. I was like, oh, so-and-so's on. I would have a look at my set to go, what would complement his material more? What is my punchier stuff? I wouldn't think about, I would still have in my head, I want blah, blah,

to go home and going, she's really improved. She's really worked at it. And isn't that odd that that's in my head? And that must be to do with people pleasing, but I also think it's to do with rejection and people, just wanting to win people over. And yeah, and the discomfort of someone not rating you, rather than that, I don't know,

it's so hard to shrug it off and go, it doesn't matter. I'm a different kind of comic. Some comics don't rate each other or we're different enough, and that's fine, whenever everyone's cup of tea. Because I respect comics so much, I hate the idea. I hate the idea that they just go, yeah, I've seen her a couple of times. I mean, what, how did she, for some reason, that is a real niggle. Yes.

And you must have, you're very smart and you will, I'm sure, have reflected on the fact that what those kind of, I always remember the phrase I used to have it by head a lot of the time was you'd see an act of those, that kind of issue, like a comedy store optimised act. Yeah. where the phrase I always think is you can't get a playing card in between the punchlines, right? It would just be bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And then afterwards, you could look back on it or you could gig there again 10 years later and go, it's still predominantly the same stuff.

It always destroys. They're clearly optimising for something different to what you're optimising for, which is a series of 90-minute tour shows over the course of 10-plus years. I know, but in terms of the audience in the room, in terms of who is the funniest? And really that is the only thing that exists. For that audience member, in terms of the night, I once did a gig with a comic. And so he's one of these guys, and it was in Kingston or somewhere.

And I'd done three gigs, so I was closing that gig. And it's exactly what you're saying. I was warming up for a tour. So I was on last. And my stuff was much, much, much, much looser, rubbery, nowhere near as compact and practiced as his. And it was so odd for the audience to have someone that good with material that good followed by me that it seemed unfair.

And someone wrote a Facebook message to under, I'm tagged. So I'm tagged in the gig, which is how I saw it. And this audience's response is absolutely what I imagine people would think in this scenario. They don't think that person's working up for a tour and that person's been doing that joke for 19 years. They wrote a thing saying it's unfair that just because she's been on TV, she got to go last. Because she was so boring in comparison to this brilliant opening. act that this person had never heard of before. And there isn't a thing where you can go, that's not, because I would say that, that would

be my instinct. I don't think I could really reflect on it too much. My instinct would just be, it's not fair. I want to go out to the audience and go. Sure. That's not fair. But then I think those acts feel it's not fair when others of us go to Edinburgh and then, yes, have a radio show come out or, because their feeling, I would imagine and have, I think it is explicitly

expressed if you go out for a fag with them or you're stuck in a car on a drive to a gig, it's not fair. I rip the roof off at every gig. Where's my stuff? And I don't know that they do quite comprehend in the same way that you have to, you have to have more material to sell it or that once you've done that on TV once, you're going to have to write a brand new set. So that's the odd thing about the circuit, isn't it?

That some of us are popping in and out of it and other people are just paying their mortgage. and that's their living. And to do that, they go and they take the best of what they've got that's been honed over so many years. And that's what they give the audience. And it is incredible. And I don't know if audiences know that. Because I think quite often they walk out.

If you're going into the car park or to the train station, you hear people talking, they're like, oh my God, that guy at the beginning. Like, why is he not on live at the Apollo? That's what they think because it's the funniest person they've ever seen. And that's where I do think the circuit can get into all of our heads. Sure. Yes, I think it's worth as well, I think from the perspective, the person writing that Facebook message, that may well be the sort, you've got to remember, we've all got to remember that people come up to us afterwards and say, do you all go around together on tour?

They have no idea. They have no concept of how it works. I think of the amount of time someone's come up to me after a gig and said, I've never been to a comedy club before. And you just have, you know, what seems, I think that thing, I suppose the wider point I would want to make is that the different kind of perspectives that comics have and that all. audience members have on what this thing is. It is such a fundamentally broad church. I often think of it in terms of like agency representation. I've heard, I've been in the room with agents over the last 20 years of various stripes saying, oh, well, act X, they're just doing that or they're not doing that.

And I always think to myself, act X doesn't have any of this context. They're just themselves living their one life and their one career. And you, the agent, the management person, are like position. You're like the dam through which the water is flowing. And they're a duck. They're just doing their thing, you know. So to get a sense of that perspective, I think it must be, I mean, you do see it when people, when acts with some profile who are warming up for tours, warming up for TV and radio shows,

when they might, like, what the gig means to you is so much different. Even at the most base level, financially. Yeah. A 350 quid gig means so much, it means completely different things to someone who's eight years in compared to someone who's got a TV show. Yes. So of course you would internally score it as, oh, lovely, the 350 doesn't matter at all because that's not on my radar financially, you might imagine. But actually, it is simply an opportunity to be in front of an audience. And my job is to take risks in front of that audience and be prepared to fail.

I think you're really right with that. I think there's two sides to it. And this is very relevant to me. So I don't need 350 pounds. So I can say that I don't need 350 pounds. It doesn't make a difference to my tax bill. It doesn't make a difference to what I can buy in my weekly shop. That's the level that I earn at.

I'm incredibly lucky. So if I am taking a 350 pound gig, unless I've put it on myself or a promoter has put on some gigs for me to work out stuff, which some do, I have a couple of. really good relationships like Math Brown or Stephen Grant, Alex Anglia, there's a couple of people who they'll put on stuff when I'm working up for a tour. So I'm very lucky. But usually what I'm doing, if I'm taking that gig, I'm taking it away from someone who does need 350 pounds.

There is an ethical issue there. When I was coming up, I saw people doing that and I thought, why are you here? And then, and now I am that guy sometimes. And why am I there? And the reason is, I don't need the 350 pounds. What I need is an exposure to an audience who didn't come out especially for me so I can actually see how much of my stuff is good enough and what needs work and what doesn't make sense to someone who doesn't have some backstory about me that these kind of things are so important so it's so selfish I am going out only for me not for the audience not for other comedians I'm I guess the audience in terms of like oh a later audience who might benefit from a tour show but it's so entirely selfish and I don't really know

how you solve that problem. Because for me, because I know some comics, they can do maybe six hours and just do it really intently. And over those six hours, over those six days, they work up the bulk of their tour show

and you could charge your audience a very small amount and be sort of ready. Whereas I just, I sort of have to do it all the time because after two or three weeks of not gigging, it feels like I've never gigged before

in my life. It just closes over like a hole and like a piercing or something. And so it feels like, How did I do it? How do you start it? What do you say to them when you look at them? Like I finished my tour and Steam was like, why are you, I thought you would just be at home.

With these gigs, like this gig tomorrow that I'm nervous at, if I haven't gigged recently, that's even scarier. But the fact is I did five gigs this weekend. So at least I did those five gigs with this corporate in my head. If I looked at my diary and I saw latitude coming up and I wasn't gigging every week, that would make me feel sick. Yeah. So it's not a thing I can turn on and off. It does feel like it's a thing that will heal over, like comedy. is some kind of scab that if I don't keep picking at it,

I'll just become a normal person and I'll be fine without it. And what would that mean to you, Sarah? Well, I think it would mean that I'd be quite happy, actually. It's much happier. So I was going to say, so some comics, in terms of using writers, when you're on TV, when you've got a corporate, when you're hosting a big event show, I think some comics, and I would say people like Stuart Lee and Robin Ince,

again, I don't think I'm slighting those men. They've said these things publicly. They do think there's an element of, cheating involved. And I think in comedy, I think we can all work to our own morality. I think when I first started, I thought that using writers was cheating. I still think probably for a tour show, other comedians might sort of shrug their shoulders and go, but that's thus most intensely us. But I think in terms of people who work a lot on TV, they can't work a lot on TV and be good quality unless they've got someone generating ideas for them.

Yes. When I did, when I hosted comedians giving lectures, lots of comics wrote their own lectures. And lots of comics had had writers write lectures for them that they then edited and put into their own words or some people came and did it word for word. And I think the people who wrote their own lectures were better, but the people who were more successful, but other people wrote their lectures were also very good. And I think that there's an element of paying people well for writing when they're on the way up. But I don't want to say it's like trickle-down economics, because I think that's usually an excuse for rich people staying much richer. I think they can be great experience gained by really great comics. And Morgan Rees is a great example of someone who is writing for you on this thing, but hopefully one day will get booked for something similar himself.

If not he already is. Sure, yeah, absolutely. You're not using someone who's not as good as you. You're using someone who's really great at a different stage in their career. with Mock the Week, the two people who wrote for me were Freya Mallard and Tom Ward, who are a couple, and also both brilliant comics who I hope will be doing Mock the Week next series or the series after. So they get to gain a little bit of experience about the prep.

That's what I, and I'm not saying that as like, I wasn't doing them a favour. They were working for me. Sure. And then there's an element of you pay people well for their ideas. And I'm not going to rip them off the rest of my life. I haven't taken their jokes and put them into my set. so I can make money off them ad nauseum. I think I'm really comfortable with the process now

and that that's how comedy works, that sometimes you just need another angle, another head, another brain on something. Yes. And it's really, the thing is, so many comics, so many brilliant comics, some of whom might poo-poo the idea of working with writers, will go and sit in the pub with their mates

and say a thing their friends said. Do you mean? Or I saw the funniest thing ever. You know, you're reporting a thing you happen to see. Like I don't really see the difference. Yeah, certainly if it's a tour show, I don't see any problem. Like I wouldn't have a writer for a tour show, you know, pitching me jokes. That would that would seem like I don't even think now I would have an ethical problem with that.

It's just not what I want to do because that's the point of the tour show or the fringe show is to say my thing. But I'd be more than happy. I'm working with Deck Monroe directing my show at the moment. And if he says, you keep saying stuff like this, you're overusing this. You go, oh, great. All of this sort of stuff. It's like I just don't have a problem with it. And certainly not for corporates, I think.

And like you say, for TV shows. Yeah, I think a lot of the people who are against the idea, once they're in that seats themselves, they will understand why you do it. Because if you've used up your best one-liners and stand up in a couple of panel shows, and so you do have to generate some new ideas, you then realise, oh, am I going to be bad next time

or am I going to use a writer? You then suddenly realise why. If you're busy, there's a real use to it. So this is Sarah. You can see Sarah Pasco for one night only at this year's Edinburgh Fringe at the underbelly on the 5th of August. So go to sarah pasco.com.com to find out more. And you can follow her on Instagram at sarah. com. Huge news now. I'm going on tour. I've sort of teased this a little bit. And if you've been listening hard, you'll have guessed already. If you're on the mailing list, you'll probably already have bought your tickets. God love you. But I'm going on tour for the first time in nearly a decade with my new climate comedy show.

Canary. I'm going to be at the following places. I'm going to be in Edinburgh at Cabre Voltaire, Cab Valle to those in the know. That's under the Monkey Barrel comedy banner from the 17th to 30th of August at 225, which is convenient unless you have a job. 225 daily from the 17th of 30th. No day off. It's only a two-week run. And then this is the rest of the places. I'm going to, throughout September, October and November, I'm going to Cambridge Junction, Glasgow, I'm going to the old fire station in Oxford, Fairfield Social Club in Manchester, the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff,

Norden Farm in Maidenhead, the foundry in Sheffield, Birmingham Glee, and then the biggest headline show of my young career. It's going to be at the Bristol Old Vic, and I'm super stoked about that. If you are listening in the South West, get your ass to Bristol.

I would love to fill that glorious venue, which I believe to be the oldest continually producing theatre in the country, which does sound caveat. anytime I hear something's a specific thing, all due respect to Bristol Old Vic, of course. It always reminds me of my brother telling me that he went on Britain's most southerly roller coaster. But that room is glorious.

I've done bundles of charity gigs for Great Western Air Ambulance and others beside the, what was it, the hospitals thing as well, and a bunch of other places. I've trod the boards there many a time, and the idea of doing my own show there is really exciting. So if you know anyone in Bristol, send them along. You can find out how to get tickets for all of those at Stuartgoldsmith.com slash comedy. I'm funneling you all through there.

And at the bottom of that page, you can also find out how to join the Comcom Pod monthly mailing list. Now, in the second half of this episode, we are going to discuss something at which Sarah excels, which is making complex ideas funny. And we'll talk about the pressure involved in that process. We'll talk about the comedy principle that Sarah still refuses to compromise on, why audiences can feel when a comic is unsure on stage and we'll also discover the impossible balance between truth and funny in stand-up

and then we'll find out whether or not the bastards are happy. Let's get back to Sarah Pascoe. Let's talk a little about the tour show which you were towards the end of when we last spoke. It's called I Am a Strange Gloop, which is such a you title. It's such a like, I am a, not quite, I don't know if you'd call yourself mainstream,

but you are a profile comic doing large, news, unafraid of taking weird risks and giving in a clunky, awkward title that might alienate some people, but which others will go, this is why we love Sarah Prasca. I really wish I hadn't called it that. I hadn't realised at the time that it was an odd title or an unuseful title. I was thinking the other day after the tour had finished, what should I have called it that would have been clearer? And I've thought of so many titles, I could have used a one word title or I was thinking. something about, anyway, anyway, it's too late to name the show.

It's finished as a tour. But I did not love it being that title, even though it did make it quite clear what the show was about. I think sometimes being, sometimes being more obtuse about what the show is about actually helps people to just come and see it. And then they find out what it's about. Well, what I love, because it was about the, or, you know, a lot of it was about the experience of the bewilderance of the bewilder. exhausting nature of parenting two young children, but also about the idea of self and where is the self, this brilliant metaphor about being a caterpillar liquidising inside a cocoon,

all this kind of stuff. I wondered if the title, the title seemed 100% authentic. That is the title that you, bewildered and exhausted, would have called your show about how bewildered and exhausted you are. Yes. And I think it also, I don't know if this was in your mind at all, named it. But I think to an extent it did have, you'll see like an original tweet going around, which I can't attribute about women dying their hair, red or, you know, purple or green or

something, where some belligerent dickhead man has said, oh, yeah, well, that's not very attractive to which the response is, no, in nature, this is to repel predators. Oh, I see. And I love that. It's just one of those things I think of. Whenever I see people with purple hair, I think, yes, good for you, you know. I wonder if there's an element or if it was in your mind that calling it I am a strange gloop would be unattractive to the sorts of people who you don't necessarily want at your show. No, Stu, absolutely not. I would want, really, in terms of tour sales, I would love everyone to come and then I would want to win them over, ideally. Because I, because I knew that there was this book called I Am a Strange Loop about the self, I just thought everyone

would get the pun. That's the first I've heard of it, I'm afraid. Exactly. So it was just a really, really bad choice. And if I'd called it, who is Sarah Pasco, like something, I could have done something that you could, it could have looked like it was about anything and still would have fit with the theme.

But I do, but I love it. There is an element of it, which is like, this person is an artist. It's like, you know, you can have the poster for that show, and I haven't seen the poster,

so I hope I'm not making you a mistake here, but it could have been you with a baby in one hand and a microphone in the other going, do you know, we've seen that poster a million times, Right. And the title could have been a similar version of that. It could have been like, oh, what's the, you know, crikey, what's going on in my life? I've got yoghurt on my top, but I'm having a nice time.

A hundred percent. Whereas it was an oblique choice and odd and quirky and did faithfully reflect a show in which there's material about Albert Camus, the myth of Sisyph and the nature of the self, and you know. Yes. So I am a strange. I back that title you don't like. Okay. Thank you. I don't like it. So the first bit of press I did, I was on Rylan and Scott Mills's radio show, not radio show,

on their podcast. And it was the first time I'd sort of said, and the first question about when you're doing that kind of stuff where people haven't seen the show and they probably haven't seen you stand-up is. So why is it called I'm a strange gloop? They just made, they just ripped the piss out of me. And then it was at that point, I realized, why have I called it this? And then right up until the Jonathan Ross show, which I did in the last two weeks of the tour. And he went, why is it called that? And I still didn't have a good answer. didn't have a succinct, funny answer, apart from, oh, I'm just a broken woman and they make you name it, you know, 18 months before you go on the tour. And I was so tired. And I thought,

how can I talk about who I am? I'm not anyone anymore. And then I, anyway, so I did regret it. But I am a strange loop. The book is written by a man called Douglas Hockstuffer who wrote Gerdle Escher Bark. Have you read that book? I haven't, by the way. Have you ever heard of it? No. Well, anyway, so it's a really, a very clever sort of philosophy book. about those people, girdle, Escher, Escher the drawer and Bark the musician about, and I think it's the maths of how they construct their work. And so then he wrote this second one afterwards called I Am a Strange Loop about how the self works, how the self makes itself, how the self knows it is a self.

And I thought, oh, how amazing, I'll read that book and I'll structure my show around that book. And then the book was too complicated. I've got about 11 pages in. So when I was first previewing the show, that book was mentioned quite a lot in it. he dedicates it to only one of his sisters. For instance, he dedicates his book to the one who gets it. He's got two sisters. Anyway, so there was stuff that was funny. And anyway, obviously, none of that was actually in the tour show at the end.

So it then just becomes this title that sort of left. You know, like when the creatures evolved, you know, like, we've got like the stub of a tail we don't need. That's that title? Yeah, that's all of these old ideas that didn't ever exist in the show. Such is the creative process. Exactly. And again, that's what I've got kind of, this is the disclaimers about, yeah, the audiences who come to see us, you can't give them this whole pamphlet of backstory. Like, this is why it's called that.

No, no, but the title itself, I'd never heard of the book or the reference, but it does suggest debt. It worked for me. And I did it right. And I'm not arguing the point here. But I think part of why it worked for me is something else I want to talk to you about, which is about your authenticity. Yeah. Like I feel that is one of your strongest suits is that you are fundamentally. a very authentic comic voice.

I feel like if you think something, you'll say it, I feel like I trust everything you say. I don't feel like you're making anything up. You might be, you know, there are comics where you go, this is an observational comedian. You mentioned Josh before. I know that Josh Whittickham's angle on this is that if a joke reveals a wider truth, then it is effectively true and you can say it as if it's true.

And I don't think there are any hard and fast rules, but that's like one point on the scale. I think that the way you work, from the recording you sent me and the other stuff that I've seen you do. I think that you are more authentic than that in terms of you are grappling with something. A lot of your material is you struggling and you grappling with something. And I feel that's an authentic grapple. And I feel like you don't pretend anything.

It's odd and it's interesting. I think it's a very nice way to look at me. as a very positive way to describe me because I think words like authenticity feel of value and it feel and sort of searching for truth, for instance, whether it's about oneself or the world, it feels like a very worthy thing to be doing. But it's not intentional, Stu.

Like I so much, I'm so much, when I was at school, primary school, secondary school, I was told that I was weird and I felt there were things I did and I was so hard doing an impression of the other children. I was trying so hard to fit in and I just couldn't

and I feel like that same thing has happened with comedy and it's not a painful thing necessarily but I really think I'm doing an impression of Michael McIntyre I really am doing my version of those people that I think are brilliant at comedy and everyone likes it agrees that it is comedy. When I'm writing my new stuff, that's what I think I'm doing. So I've got this new bit at the moment. It's not really a bit, actually. It just ends,

but it's about how I wish my dog would lay eggs. And when I'm coming up with it, I think, brilliant. I've got my out-out. I've got my man draw. This is going to mean my bit. It's the dogs laying eggs. And then I tried it at the classroom grand. And as it's happening, I'm like, what are you saying? But I really am trying to do proper comedy. And so maybe that's the thing about, and maybe that's the thing about the self and what we all do. We keep coming back to the person we are and that's the comedian that you are. And you really can't deviate that much from it.

And to deviate from it is to be much worse, not better. So the years of comedy, the thing that you really do end up honing is the truer version of yourself, the truer version of your clown self, which is your comedy self. And you follow where people laugh the most. And audiences really can sniff out when you're trying to pretend to be something that you're not. They really know how present you are and what you say. And they really know how much you really care about saying it. There are comics whose best routines.

I care so much about them saying it. But I don't care about the topic. I remember Russell Howard once talking about Catherine Ryan, complementarily, saying like how incredible she was. And he's saying, I don't care about Cheryl Cole or the Kardashians. But when she talks about Cheryl Cole or the Kardashians, Kardashians, I care. And I think that's such a good example of really great comedians.

I can't do a routine about the Kardashians, not caring about the Kardashians, because then no one cares. They don't care that I can't pretend. But we know when someone's passion, we know when it's, we just sniff it out when it's fake. And I think that is the thing. If you do sometimes look at other comics, I followed someone the other day. I was late for a gig at the weekend and I followed Bemi. His clips are brilliant online as well.

He does lots of stuff at Top Secret. He's got this most incredible, I'd say, it's like sunshine, but the speed of which he talks and the energy means that it's like, and it's so amazing when a comic does that, like, cascades over you, layer over layer. And he's, you know, he's not reinventing the wheel. And I don't say that as a critical way. I mean, he's talking about EasyJet and how he doesn't want to die on an EasyJet flight.

So it's a really simple premise. It's absolutely universal. We've all been on shit airlines. But the waves of the jokes coming over you and the speed of which he talks and I'm just backstage going, I want to be him. I want to start again in comedy. I'll just get a new name because it's very hard. I can't just go out on stage if they know me as the old me. I'm going to have to reinvent myself.

I'll get a hat and I'll start the open mic circuit again. I want to watch how he speaks, that rhythm of words coming one after the other. And the jokes just being hidden in there like nuggets. And they're all laughing at different times. And I'm like, this is the worst thing to think before you go on is I want to be an entirely new comedian based on that guy. But that's how I feel when I watch really funny people. Mark Watson has a similar thing with rhythm where I watch him and his voice and he's, it's so inbuilt in him. Things are so funny that written down, I couldn't repeat them as a joke, but they are so funny.

And I just have that so much about other comics. So when you say something really lovely about authenticity, what I think is like, I know, but I don't really want to be me. I just really like to be someone else. Well, I think it's an interesting. I think the result that we see on stage in one of your shows is you with your unique worldview, trying really hard to make your unique worldview about your dog laying eggs to be relatable. Yes. And maybe that's one of the, when I say you're grappling, maybe that's what you're grappling with. You are like the bit the bit about Albert Camus is.

so, like you're doing a thing, I think we may have talked about this a little bit last time, you're doing a thing I'm really impressed by and kind of, I want to do that, I'm trying to do a lot of that myself with the stuff that I do about climate and sustainability. You are explaining something very complex and intellectual, let's say, but you're doing it in language which is completely accessible and relatable in order to make a point which is accessible and relatable, but no less, you know, when you're talking about the self and what is the self, at one point I think in the show you talk about how am I a gas with eyes that I'm looking out of. And that is, you know, that's a pretty head wobbling kind of an idea. But I don't feel

like there's anyone in the audience with their arms folded going, I can't contact what she means. You're making it understood and you're making it explicit. So maybe it is part of that desire to go, it's a gas with eyeballs, but I'm going to do this like McIntyre. Maybe that's one of the things that makes you. I think that maybe that is the nub of it, is that unfortunately I don't have ideas like the man draw. I'm still waiting for something which is just so obvious

and everyone knows it and it means it's just the most perfect routine where you show someone the world and it was already the world and now it will always be attached to you. People still say out-out when they're going out, referencing not only the fact that they used to say it, but also Mickey Flanagan, Like to become something so culturally embedded because what you observed was so perfect. Anyway, my main thing is that there are, I do think that people are made to feel stupid,

not by stand-up comics, never by stand-up comics, because our whole thing is to be understood and we're there for everyone. So if you want to mention something that might make someone go, this isn't for me or I don't know the person you're referencing, it always has to be done in a way where number one, you completely explain it so there's no miscomprehension and you,

after you've said it and told them who it is, now they do know. So they're all absolutely leveled. There's no superiority of having heard of someone or not. Like being aware of Albert Camus is no different to being aware of Kim Kardashian. There are people in the audience who won't have heard of, I'm trying to think of

someone like Stephen Fry I can remember in some of the early days of QI's he wouldn't have heard of Katie Price or something it's like that doesn't mean that he's dumb it just means he imbibes culture in a different way yeah that bit about the self and the gas behind my eyes when I was postpartum one of the big things that happened to me

and actually only ended up being a shadow of it in the show was that I really kept seeing Jimmy Saville when I looked in the mirror. I had this, I really, there was something about my face and I kept saying to Carrie, I had my best friend, why has no one told me I looked like Jimmy Saville? And she was like, this is just hormones.

I went, no, I said, no, I look like Jimmy Saville. I've got very similar hair. And then it ended up, I did have a joke in the show, not saying that it was a postpartum thing, but for months, I kept having this weird dysmorphia about Jimmy Saville. So anyway, it's very hard to, make the postpartum psychosis funny, but you do end up with a tiny bit. And that thing about

thinking, walking around my house in the middle of the night, not sleeping, not feeling like my body was mine, that it was a vehicle and I was just looking out of my own eyes. I did eventually get to that joke about getting out of my body. But it is a long bit of my show without a punchline. And you can't have too many of them, but I do feel the audience on tour, if I feel the audience It's going, where is she going with this? And as long as you only do it once or twice, it's so enjoyable to actually know you will laugh in a minute. It just feels like a long time since you have.

Yes. Yes, that's interesting, isn't it? The feeling in you on stage doing a very deliberate thing where you know that you're getting a point across. Like the job is to make you laugh. We're doing 90 minutes worth of that. Yeah. But this bit, like so the feeling for you,

is there a kind of an elasticity there where you're thinking, well, I hope this does. Like if they, if I, if someone coughs on a key word in the one punchline at the end of a three minute weird wobbly bit, really is that like, yeah, exactly. Or you know what I mean? Like is there still attention of that for you? Or with your audience, do you feel you've built up enough trust? Because that bit, even though it's less punchline dense, it's the most, it's my favorite and most memorable bit from the show. And also that was the point of what I was trying to say in the whole show to bring it back to the title.

if I cut that bit, suddenly it's just some jokes about being a new mum. It doesn't have this bit of being a new mum led to me losing myself. And so that bit is so vital. I would say it's like that bit on a roller coaster where it starts going really slowly before the hill. And actually what you can't do, even if you, so when you feel them go, hang on, what is she talking about? You can't speed up, you can't try and get to you. you actually have to sort of just absolutely be fearless. And this is the bit I wanted to say to you.

I wanted to say this to you. And then there's a release of tension when it's over. Oh, that's what she meant. And then back to another bit. So I do think there's something enjoyable about it. I remember, what's his name? Scott. Scott

Tall American Scott Capuro he once said we did a panel together and he was saying that a boo was as good as a laugh like a boo was as good as a laugh because like when you've

you know and I've never felt that but I know some comics do it's wired in the same way that reaction is all you want God that's very different to my understanding

of coming out I totally get what he means and the kind of boo he means it's not boo you're bad quality. It's boo, I am against what that joke was. And that's their way of laughing at that joke. And I think if you've gone to a Scott Capuro show, you have gone for that. And if he then crosses a line that even you, a Scott Capuro fan, didn't enjoy. I can absolutely imagine that. But yeah, that wouldn't, it wouldn't be, that would be for me that life. I couldn't live that life.

Some of your stuff is, I think some of your stuff is sort of agitational. Some of your stuff is like, here is a thing that I, that I feel. Yeah. That you, my audience might be with me. on but that other people won't like. And I'm thinking about some of your stuff about masculinity or some of your stuff from lads, lads, lads. Yeah. Is there a bit in Gloop that you are, or in any other show, that you are particularly proud of having managed to get over the line with a crowd?

That's a very good question. In Gloop, I would say just a bit about saying that I'm trying to, well, that I am a, without procedures and Botox and saying it in a way where I don't think I'm shitting on anyone who does do those things because I think two things can be true at the same time.

I think we've all gone absolutely insane about trying to look younger than we are rather than doing the work of accepting you are aging, you will die. And this is, I think the biohacking thing is mad and I think the amount of money that people spend on cosmetic beautifying procedures and I don't think that is as gendered as it used to be I think it's insane

but I think that that insanity is a response to we have been sent insane by social media and capitalism that's what I really really feel and I there's a bit in my show where I feel I've managed to get around that in such a non-attacking way by talking about mice being sewn together an experiment about mice being sewn together and then in a later version of the tour and it wasn't in there at the beginning, I talk about the very powerful men who are extremely vain and insecure. And again, it's very brief, Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Brian Johnson, who's a biohacker. And I do that not by, and I really like that I've left women out of it, that I'm not talking about women with fillers in their face, and I'm not talking about Love Island contestants,

and I'm not talking about that for me, that is an instance where I go, it's what I believe, and I think it's important that people hear it of every age. I really think it's important that there's amplified voices going. Some people are actually aging naturally. It's not everyone and you don't have to. And actually also, you don't look as terrible as you think you're going to look if you don't do it. But no one's really saying that. And everyone pretty much on television is having stuff done.

Also saying it out loud means that I never will do it, as in I never can. And I do have weekdays. You know, you look at people who look incredible and you go, oh, fuck it. And saying it out loud does sort of keep you honest in a way. It would be so much worse to say it and then do it. Yes, yeah, definitely, definitely. I felt that very keenly. I did lots of anti being a runner material years ago.

And now I'm a runner and I'm perpetually worried. Someone's going to stop me and go, oy, you hit me a bit. Yeah, the running community don't want you after all those journeys to do. Exactly, yeah. Band from park run. You said years ago, when you last were on the, the show, which must be 12 years ago or more. You said, I think you said at the time, that one of your plans in your life was to become

an MP. Yes, it was. It was a plan. I had at 14 or 13, whenever I decided I wanted to be an actor, the way that my decades were plotted out, 40s was for literature. I wanted to write my first book at 40. And then I wanted, in my 50s, I was very aware that I had made very selfish choices, as in I wanted to be a performer.

And also very aware, this was at 14, because I wanted to be an actor. My sister Cheryl, who's 12 at the time, says being an actor is really selfish. My sister Cheryl is now, she teaches GCSE English in a school in North Essex. And she also loves running, by the way. And she's so incredible. And so she's much more talented than me, and this was explicitly expressed by our amateur dramatics group and our family. And she made this decision to when acting's really selfish. It's just about you.

And I think putting MP on the end, this was my misunderstanding, I think, of politics. That's how you give back at the end. I thought, I'll gain myself. Yeah. That's how you do you good. I thought, I'll do these selfish things. But also, I did think even at that age, I was like, I'll have a profile, and then I'll use that profile to get into politics.

This is before people like Boris Johnson had happened. I don't know how I understood. And then even when I was starting comedy and I was learning how to write comedy and how to talk in front of people and I still at that point thought this will all be so useful for when I'm doing speeches. I'm going to do such incredible speeches

that are comprehensive and don't talk down to people and are funny because you can release tension whenever you want. And I thought all of these skills would be so great and I think some point, obviously since that 12 years ago, one thing I realised is that I couldn't be hated

in the way that politicians are hated. Politicians let people down. And also even when they don't let people down, the way that we talk about what they look like, the way that they are so the enemy, I just don't know how any of them, I don't know how any of them can do it. And I know that you could just not have social media

and not know what they said about you in the papers. You could just choose to as much as you could put cotton wool in your ears. I don't know how I could do that to my family. And I don't think I could deal with the constraints of, wanting to do good and not being able to do it. Seeing the numbers and going, it's a choice between that and that. I don't know,

even on a local politicians level, how people need things, and it's not fair that they don't have them. And actually what needs to happen is dramatic restructuring of economics. But that, because that was my idea, is that I would, when my kids were a bit older.

And at that point, obviously, when I spoke to you, I didn't know how to have kids, but I still had this idea about doing, doing an economics degree, doing a degree properly, And maybe that is something I would do because I think that's something you would have to understand really properly before you went into politics. I think a lot of us have really sort of in our stomach moralistic views that it's no good if we can't back them up with how you pay for it and how you pay for it in terms of understanding taxation.

And so this is, but in terms of politics itself, I think in terms of my third act, which I would like to be much more generative, it might end up just being. that I run drama groups that are really cheap because I believe so much in drama being so helpful for young people or I get involved with a charity that already exists and you have become some kind of, you work in something where you just concentrate on fundraising and doing the good things

without the political umbrella. But I do think I've had the most amazing life. I'm so lucky in all the things that have happened. And there is a point on the not too distant horizon, five years, seven years, where I would love, I would love to be going, I have made enough money?

You know the thing we look at other people? And again, back to the £350 gigs or, say surely they don't need, surely they don't need that. I would love to be at the point where I go, I don't. I don't want my kids to be rich. I think growing up rich,

especially if there's money in the bank for you at certain ages, fucks you up. I don't want them to have it. I would like to sort of live by example. If I get to have an older age or I'd love to go, yeah, I spent the years in my early retirement doing valuable things. And then that, yeah. Go on, sorry.

And that would feel to me like balancing out how lucky I've been. I would go, I was so lucky and that's what lucky people should do afterwards is help other people be luckier. Yes. You will know who said this probably more than I can remember. the purpose of freedom is to free other people. It may have been Maya Angelou, I think. Oh, wow.

Okay. I just saw it recently. I haven't read it in Maya Angelou, but I saw it on like in something pathetic, like on a poster, but that really, really stayed with me. And I think that's kind of pertinent. Because when you are free, especially if you weren't free,

and Maya Angelou would be a very interesting person if that's what she said because she had such a hard life. And then perhaps she felt more privileged later on to have a platform and to be, have money from her very, very successful books and things like that. Then what you realise is it is so much better. It is so much better to have to have choices. And there's no reflection of worth of humanity from the people at the top

and the people who are struggling lower down. Do you, do you, how is your perception of your ability to change the world through your work changed? Quite early on in. comedy, I realised that lots of people in the 80s and early 90s had talked about how bad aeroplane food was. And aeroplane food had never improved. And I kept hearing comedians talking about comedy change in the world. And I was like, there was one thing they had for a decade. They kept saying the meals aren't very good on aeroplanes. If we could change...

This is such a vivid example. It's unavoidable. To have seen that many routines, and I'm talking about people um uh um um what's his name eddie um with the red jacket i'm talking about the most famous comedians in the world talking to everybody what i basically knew is we could we could tell ourselves we're doing a huge amount of good but i i think that's not quite right i think i think we should be making the world better not worse yeah because that's not an excuse to go it doesn't matter what we say it It does matter what we say. I think we're usually reflective rather than leading change

in terms of how cultural perceptions change in terms of politics, feminism, gender identity. I think in the main, most comedians that I know have got a really good grip of trans rights, have got really good grips on sex and gender and self-identifying and things like that. the vast majority of politics of comedians otherwise because otherwise people big groups of people wouldn't come to see you wouldn't come to see you so and I think that then we can reflect that back

so I think that there are there are people climate change is a great example or with feminism where you go they're so funny people are so funny and then people come and listen to them and maybe some of their ideas are broadened or they already agreed but they hadn't quite thought about something in that kind of way.

So maybe opinions are confirmed or sharpened. So I definitely think we can be part of a wave of improvement and betterness and kindness and empathy and all of those things. With the invention of the novel, they said that it was, they sort of measure it as a point of society becoming more empathetic.

And for instance, Uncle Tom's cabin is one of the, pinpoints in terms of white people understanding racism a bit better and systemic racism and the movement for anti-slavery, the abolishment of slavery, because novels are all about empathy. You spend a really long time being in someone else's mind and sometimes seeing how they experience the world. Stand-up comedy isn't quite that. We talk about ourselves and they watch us.

So they don't get inside our heads feeling us, but we do tell them a little bit about what it's like to be us. So I do think there's an element of we can do goodness. But I can't think of anyone individually when I'm like, and they got that prime minister elected or they got Nigel Farage out. These things that really do need to happen. I think there are other kinds of, I think the little, the seesaw between activism and comedy is a really delicate balance.

And I don't think anyone can pat themselves on the back too much for the comedic side. I think when I was a teenager, I would watch Mark Thomas on TV. And that has made it impossible for me to take certain actions. You know, no matter what they did and how they changed, I could never vote conservative. And that is informed by amongst other people, Mark Thomas. Like there was a lot of kind of 80s and 90s overtly political comedy. Not a lot, a very small amount, really, but it really connected with me when I was developing my personality, I suppose. Yeah.

And I think, but I think you're absolutely right is you can't really point to direct effects so much as if someone is a massage therapist, then they get to massage one person at a time and improve their life briefly. You know, if it's a course or a massage or a one off, you know, maybe they put a spring in that person's step. And I think as comics, the bigger audience we have, the more people we can kind of massage that may be in the context of comedy a bad analogy. But it's a great analogy As long as you don't actually touch anyone Touching hearts Yeah I absolutely And that's where

To come back to my insecurity Or my That scolding feeling of not being funny It's like I gave him a bad massage You came here to feel more relaxed And you've walked out of here And your shoulders are just as high and tight As they were before

I have failed That failure bothers me And I think the moment When that failure stops bothering us that's when we know I can't do this anymore as a job because I don't I don't care. So I think the act of being entertainers or entertaining people and making them have a happy time is vital and important and we charge for it and we get paid and I think that's all great. I think that's all completely fair. I think it's all completely fair. I think sometimes we're so desperate for hope that we would

love to think that our how much we think about these things and how much we want the world to be better. I think we might sometimes some people might get a bit carried away with what our real use is. I guess what I think at the moment all the time is we just have to be doing so much more once we have a mouthpiece and people listen to us and and it doesn't mean that we have to. Sometimes we're not comfortable with it. Sometimes it's too much. Sometimes we just want to be funny and I think that's enough. It's not like I think we have to. But I also, I think the danger is always thinking you've done, thinking you've done something when you haven't really. My dad always used to talk about, well, it was talking about my mum, but crying at the news.

And he said, there's no point crying at the news. It makes you feel like a good person, but you haven't done anything. And I think that's what influenced me as a very young person. So I'd rather be honest to go, I haven't done anything. Then, no, I think I did something. But I didn't. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yes, your dad struck upon the concept or a parallel concept of white tears very early on before it was. I really saw that happen. I was at an event in France and a person was giving a very passionate speech about their experience of climate change in Uganda and the effect on their children.

And literally someone older American white lady interrupted them to make it all about her. And I was just like everyone around the room was going, oh, this is it. We're seeing that this is the thing that happens. Seeing it live live. It's extraordinary. It is extraordinary. But also we all live inside ourselves. And this is not me trying to be over compassionate.

woman, but we do have to learn that we're not the main character. Otherwise, we live our lives like we are and that Uganda's about us as soon as I've heard a bit about it. Oh, this is now, this is now what I think about it to tell others. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And I think, but you're absolutely right. And of course we have compassion for that person as well. But I suppose I just think, yes, it's a balancing act, isn't it? Between thinking you've not done anything and actually going, oh look I am trying. I think to myself a lot. We will wrap up.

One of two little things I wanted to just draw a line under. One of the things I think when I'm trying to do climate comedy and it doesn't strike, you know, trying to do material out in a difficult context or newer material or what have you. One of the things I think is I'd come back to thinking, hey, I could have not tried. Trying is definitely better than not trying.

It definitely would be easier not to try. So just that little thing of like, surely that is one step on the right path, even if it doesn't work or didn't work. I think as well, just to mimic your wonderful natural, structural finessing of this interview, back to the topics that we covered at the part, just to briefly mimic that, I wonder if in the massage analogy you going on mock the week is like going, right, sometimes I'm going to try and massage like a bodybuilder just to see if I can make a difference in difficult terrain, just to keep the, you know, variations of the gears working to kind of keep flexibility.

Yes. There's an element of that. It's going or a very different form of massage that I've not trained in properly. I'm much less experience. If I'm doing a nice Swedish one and then someone needs, yeah, it's a deep tissue. It's something, it's something else. It's rolfing. It's something that I'm not quite qualified to do. An unqualified rolfe with Sarah Fasco. So if we named episodes, that would be it. And Reese James is very good at Rolfing. He does it every week. But I don't know how he feels about whether or not he's aghast looking out from some eyes that may not off the end.

I don't think we'll ever know. He'll never tell us. So in your show, just before the interval of your tour show, you have a climate joke, which my ears pricked up at, which was a very funny joke about the amount of carbon a human will produce in their lifetime. I mean, it kind of said something about, it's a joke about offsetting it. If I can convince, I've had kids, that's bad. But if I can convince you not to have kids, then I've offset the kids that I've which is a lovely joke.

And also, I was really pleased to see you tackling something climate-wise. Yes. Is that something that you, how do, okay, well, two things. How do you feel we're doing climate-wise? Yes, yeah. How do you feel we're doing? How do you feel we, and what do we need to do? And how much do you, you,

how much are you motivated to talk about it? So the show, when I started it, I wanted to talk a lot about the climate catastrophe. I wanted to, I wanted to, I wanted to have these two climax points, one of them, and they both got cut in the end. The one that you're talking about, about carbon emissions and how mine have tripled since having children and that how, because I talk very negatively about having children, perhaps I could put two people in the audience off having kids. that would offset mine. I was really satisfied and pleased with that because actually the important detail I wanted to wring in people's ears in that agitating way

is how much carbon we produce every year. So I guess my awareness is this is how much carbon I produce every year and one of the things that's really shocking to me about having children, along with the domestic drudgery, is the environmental costs. The amount of washing I have to do every day, the amount of clothes I have to buy as they grow, the toys that are.

that they play with and how they are made and what they are made out of. I would say that I, before I had children and as a plant-based eater, I had an element of, I was trying to do as little damage possible. I stopped buying any clothes from shops. I only buy secondhand clothes from Vinted. So I have sort of morality where I'm okay with it. As in I go, that's the best you can do while also having a nice dress when you go on TV. all these kind of things.

I'd sort of worked out my moral ways. I found out that like vegan leather was really bad in terms of, it's plastic and it breaks really soon so that you have to look into better forms of shoes. But I've got the money that I can do that. I can look for really great, really great people that might be from Catalonia,

companies I mean who are making. So anyway, what I'm trying to say is I had this time what I felt like I was constantly, if not month or month, year on year, I was getting better. in terms of the damage I'm doing to the planet by existing in the Western world as a consumer, as in my consumption. And then having children sent it out the window.

So that is something I so wanted to address in the show. And I don't know if this is what you're finding, but I found that maybe paranoia or maybe a real intuition with the audience, people really don't like being told about it because they feel bad as well. And they either feel like I know this and I feel bad, Or don't you tell me, I'm already being told and I'm not going to. It's either a stubbornness. And I can't, I couldn't always.

We know and we're the good guys and we're already doing all of the same things as you. So this is boring to us. Or it's actually so terrifying. What do you say? Do you say the predictions? Do you talk about, you know, carbon dioxide that's about to be freed from the oceans because of melting ice caps? Do you talk about stuff that the catastrophes? And then the reason I thought the show was the perfect place to talk.

about it was because having young children, suddenly these dates in the future, I know what ages they're going to be at these things that are happening. 100%. And so I thought, it's so funny to talk about how selfish we are. I didn't really care as much about 2050 or 2085 when I was going to be dead, but my children won't be dead. And the idea of anyone's children, all of a sudden, bits of some sort of, and so I was trying to find funny ways to talk about that, even though having children. has made me much worse of a consumer. So it's this irony.

This was my whole, the whole ironic point I wanted to make about this show, wanted to make in that show, was that the ironic thing of having children had made me cared more about the future, which is ironic because the worst thing you can do for the future is put more people on the planet, da-da-da-da. And then so much of it got cut and so much of it,

it's a howl into the dark. And a howl isn't stand-up comedy. It's a howl. And so then you go, where else do I do it? Do I talk about it on podcasts? Do you write books? Do you just, you talk about it in your life? Do you, I think every single stand up that I've seen recently will have a reference.

There's something. And in terms of the new stuff I'm writing, I'm not trying to write a show about climate change, but already I've got those, you know, the thing in hotels, I'm sure you talk about it where they have signs now to ask you not to wash your towels. Really observational. Everyone's seen those towels. Hotel Devan give you a free glass of wine if you choose not to have your room cleaned while you're there. Because I've been on tour.

I've seen all of the different hotels and their version. And the wine's from New Zealand. Yeah, exactly. So there's all these great, it is observational society as a whole is talking about it. It doesn't have to be a howl into the dark. It's then about useful choices and failures and all of those things. So I do think I'm really engaged and want to do it. But I think I'm really aware of how difficult it is to be really, really funny at the same time.

The trade-off will be, it will be small bits. The ending of my show originally was that I'd written a third testament to the Bible, which was about saving the world. And it was about climate change. And it was about how we'd have all these plagues in the Bible, mosquitoes. I'm not doing the bit, by the way. It's just me telling you what the bit was. You know, plagues of locusts and pigs and that we'd never realize that human beings were the real plague.

And just like locusts, we know that what we're doing is going to be the destruction of us. We're eating all the crops. we're breeding. And there's like a Greta Thunberg locust who's saying to the others. If we keep eating at this level, we're going to run out of crops and then we're all going to die. And we just, we can't stop. We were programmed by evolution to be a certain way.

Oh my God. Was it intelligent? And yes, it was. Was it worth writing in a Bible and standing reading a Bible to an audience? No, it wasn't. It wasn't. It had a call back to a Paula Radcliffe, Bick. It did have a strong joke.

It just wasn't. It just wasn't. right. It would be absolutely great at ACMS or an Edinburgh show. I think I'd have got away with it, but I couldn't get away with it in a thousand cita. It wasn't the right ending for a show. It didn't, it wasn't positive. It wasn't, love you so much. See you later. Bye. It was, we are locust, destroying the thing that we need to survive. And even Jesus can't save us. Good night. I mean, I've done some pretty mean stuff to them in the name of climate comedy. I don't think I've hit them that hard.

But that's the truth of it. So that's how I feel. And I did. And that's how I feel. And I thought, I thought it was such a clever analogy that it just didn't feel right. And it wasn't right. It's the sad truth. So I love that we get jobs where we get to grapple with that.

But I do think the bit of being a comedian I'm comfortable with is also knowing when I haven't made it funny enough and I didn't get away with it this time. And, but if anyone else chooses to do the less funny. let's say worthier bit. I also don't, I don't, I think that's great. Like, thank God for you. Well done for doing it. I doff my hat at you, but I can't stand the feeling in my body.

Really appreciate your answer. Before you leave us then, Sarah Pascoe, are you happy? I'm very happy, yes. I finished my tour. My children only wake up once a night at the moment. So I'm really happy. Yeah, I'm good. Thank you.

from here. So that was Sarah. I'm so, so grateful for her for making the time and indeed then making the time all over again and all the administrative faf in between. So thank you to Sarah. You can see Sarah Pasco for one night only at this year's Edinburgh Fringe at the Underbelly

on the 5th of August. Sarah pasco.com.com. For all of your doings. And you can keep up with her on Instagram at sarah. Pascoe. 15 minutes of extras on this one. If you, I mean, this is 15 minutes of perfect sound quality extras from this recording, including some really good stuff about corporates.

I think this conversation happened the day before Sarah had a worrying corporate, or a nerve-racking, let's say a nerve-wracking corporate engagement. And I think I said some useful stuff to her. It's a really good conversation. And we will get into the nitty and gritty on that in the extras. Also, we'll talk about the different standards. held between public and private shows and the survival tactics used by pro comedians on the circuit. So lots of real inside the wizard's wheelhouse stuff inside the magician's baseball vendigram. There's a lot of that stuff.

Find out for any £3 a month at patreon.com.com pod plus an entire later this month, hour and 45, I think, hour and a half at least, of the original recording, which is crackly but listenable if you're a hardcore. Thank you to Sarah. Thank you so much to Susie Lewis for the logging. Evil producer, Callum, is your evil producer. I've been Stuart Goldsmith. The music was by Rob Smouton. And thank you for listening. What else is going on? Is that, oh, I'll tell you. Oh, I'm also going to do a quick shout out as well. Lee Kyle. You'll remember lovely Lee Kyle. He's very, very funny. And he's written a book on doing Edinburgh shows. It's available from I'mleykyle.com. So imley, Lee Kyle, all one word. I'm Lee Kyle.com. You can find out how to see me live at Stuart Goldsmith.com slash comedy. And I hope that you do because I have had some lovely, lovely previews recently, and I'm in that sweet spot.

Do you know, this is the sweet spot I'm in. I'm going to post-Tamble. No, I'll tell you what, I'll do the thanks, and then I'll post-Tamble. Thank you to the insider producers LHRS, I-C-D. Lovely to see you in Levington. D-P-K-S-S-A-J-L-G-M-K-S-S-D-V-K. Oh, Dave, well, you just got to be Dave. P-S-A-W and J-B.

And a big thank you to our two special insider executive producers, Neil T-T-F-N-P-N-Peters, and Andrew S-W-A-L-K, Denant, and to the super-secret one as well to you. Thank you. So that'll do, and then I'll post-A-W-L-A-U at the thing I was about to say, if I can remember. But between now and then,

oh, we've got some bangers in the can. Really good one coming up with brilliant Joe Wells. And we've also got a lovely two-parter as Nish Kumar returns returns. No, just returns, returns, third time. That's an absolute killer. If you are out and about at the moment, go and see A-Caster on tour. Not that you need me to tell you, but I took the boy and we both absolutely loved it.

It's an extraordinary achievement in that show, and it's been a real privilege, see it coming to being from first idea to previews to extra materially and what have you, and then we saw him at the Bristol Hippodrome, and it was just such an edge of, education. God damn it, he's good. And so you should definitely go and see that. Who else have we seen? I think Eric Rushton's on tour at the minute. That show Inkeeper I saw at Mac last year and it's brilliant, so don't miss that. And then there was someone else tickling at my brain, but not to worry. Maintain a consistent sense of self between now and when I next speak to you if you can, if that is available to you. And that's the sort of thing a yoga person says, just do a headstand if

that's available to you. And I will now try and remember what I was going to post ambler at you at about of. Bye. Oh, this is it. I'm in the sweet spot at the moment now because here, oh so this is illustrative just briefly because I've got to go and get the girl. Um, uh, illustrative of where I am in the process, recording this on Wednesday the 3rd of June. I've had two very nice previews recently. Learners, but learners in a good way. Lerner's not in a kind of a, oh, I learned. Um, but like a, oh, this is, We're getting there. So much so that yesterday I sent myself a note. I've got a widget. I've got an Android phone and I use a thing called macro. Mac Android? What's it called? It's good. I want to recommend it. What's it called? MacroDroid. MacroDroid. It's incomprehensible, but I comprehends it. And I've built a little widget on my phone now so that when I press an icon on the home screen, I press an app, it opens the voice recording thing. And then I say, something for a few seconds and then it turns that into the subject line of an email to myself.

So as you can imagine, I'm very proud of myself, use it all the time and now have hundreds of email notes to myself that are completely impossible to manage. But one of them said, remember that the period in July, when the show is made, and I'm sort of very nearly in that period now, we're nearly there, when the show is made, the script is written and what you're doing is just pruning little bits, letting it breathe. Pruning little bits, letting it breathe. Suddenly, when you're in that mode, it's such a creative mode. And because you don't have the show towering over you in full or in small parts or in nothing,

you don't have this, oh Christ, what am I going to do feeling? You're just being nicely creative every single day. I made a note to myself that said, why not try starting writing the next show in July? Because you're up and running. You feel really great about yourself. You're going out every night previewing and having bang of gigs by that stage, we hope. Or taking risks and finding that this time the audience was the teacher.

More on that in a second. And so wouldn't that be good? Wouldn't that be, that should be the way around? It reminds me, it echoes, it rhymes with the thing that Phil Berger said years ago about go on holiday just before your Edinburgh run, because then you're relaxed and rested. And I am doing that this year and it's going to be hot where I'm going. and I will be nearly go and get the girl. I will be doing a climate show with a rich mahogany tan,

and I can't stress enough that I naturally get a rich mahogany tan just from being in Clantwit Major for two days during the heat wave the other week. But it will look askance, and I'll need to say something about it. My point being, that idea of going on holiday before the thing so that you're ready for the thing, rather than caning yourself through it, completing the thing in bits, and then try to go on a holiday when actually you end up being ill. Has resonance for me, it feels like it fits with the idea of

get the show written in June, keep writing it in July, keep fiddling with it and working on it, but start the new show in July. Revolutionary. The last thing then, before I go and get the girl from school this is, and kill the baddies, also it's cool. The last thing is that idea of mate. Okay, so my friend Mark shared this with me.

Very funny, newer comedian Mark Serra. He is, I think he was describing it was an arm wrestling champ and he wanted to be the best in the world. You'll know who I'm talking about if you know who I'm talking about. And he kept trying to take down the champ and he would lose and then go away and train all year and then come back and lose again. And the thing he said was this time you are the teacher.

Maybe next time I will be the teacher. and I thought that was an extraordinary piece of mental resilience. What a great way to think about things. It popped into my head because I was thinking about those tough type of gigs. You have good gigs where they're a learner, good gigs where they're a teacher, you know. Sometimes at the gigs you are the teacher and sometimes the gig is the teacher. And actually, you just keep doing the stuff and then one day you use up your goes and die. So you've really got to try and enjoy those goes, right?

So what a lovely way to enjoy them. Fortunately, recently, I've had a good mix of me being the teacher and the gig being the teacher. And now I'm going into, what am I doing? I think as of tomorrow I'm doing a little micro work in progress for Deck Monroe's course that he teaches at Angel Comedy. Deck is, of course, the brilliant director of the show of Canary. And so I've got one for him and then Exeter Comedy Festival on Friday and then Northampton Comedy Festival on Saturday.

And I'm going to be the teacher. Well, I think Dex's going to be the teacher, but then I'm going to be the teacher. Bye for now.