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First I trained as a newspaper deliverer, then as a waitress, then as bar staff, then as a cook, then as an SEO accounts manager, then as a receptionist, then as a shop assistant and the whole time I was training as a comedian and writer.
I've worked since I was 13. Don't treat all "artists" like we fell out of mummy & daddy's loft conversion into our cushy jobs. Just because nepotism is ripe in all industries doesn't mean there aren't a tonne of us artists still paying off the debt we got into getting here
I am SO sick of this idea that all comics are London yups who were paid by their families to follow their dreams. I'm Somerset born and bred, dad's a builder and mum's a teaching assistant. Didn't stand a chance of any help up the ladder in the arts but I got here
The thought of going back to one of the many, many jobs I am trained for makes me tired and sad because I'm not as good at them as I am this one. I'm better for people, and the economy, in my current role. But don't imagine we don't do it constantly
Don't imagine artists aren't always doing "normal" (?! wtf does that even mean) jobs to subsidise slow months, or empty months or weird years. When I first moved to Brighton I sold saucepans all day, beers at the Dome all night and still fit in as many gigs as I could
And it was knackering because you could just see the kids who'd known they were meant to go to Oxbridge to get into comedy skipping several steps I was doing, but what choice do you have? I didn't know when I was 16 that that was what you did - no one knew around me to tell me
I don't know where this rant is going but I'm tired of the word "artist" like it's vague and pretentious. It's Eastenders and Deal or No Deal and all your books and your carpets. It's nothing extra: it is just everything
