Things were going brilliantly for Bradford-born stand-up Johnny Pelham.
His 2019 Edinburgh Fringe show won rave reviews and he was given a spot on the prestigious TV comedy show Live at the Apollo.
But just as everything seemed to be on the up, Pelham started falling out of love with stand-up.
“I just stopped enjoying comedy.”
“I came out of Covid thinking I couldn’t do it anymore. I had not really had a funny thought for however long it was.”
His new show ‘Optimism over Despair’ is the story of what happened next.
Pelham’s previous show ‘Off Limits’ had revealed that he was sexually abused from the age of eight.
By talking about the abuse in public he hoped he could put it behind him – but he began to realise things were not that simple.
“It just meant that a lot of people would come up to me and talk about their own trauma.
“It all got worse after ‘Live at the Apollo’, I hadn’t realised the scale of it.
“I had only talked about it to two or three people in my life and then I started talking about it on stage.”
It wasn’t so much his own experience as being confronted with the experience of other people which left him feeling overloaded.
Some people even told him that sexual abuse was not something you should talk about in a comedy show – but Pelham disagrees.
“I don’t think that’s true. I think you can talk about whatever you like.
“There was something incredibly powerful about talking about it in public. But I guess it’s about where you draw the line.
“I’m not the sort of comic who talks about social or political things. I talk about my life.
“I don’t think you choose what kind of comic you are.”
One of the reasons ‘No Limits’ had been so praised by the critics was despite the harrowing subject matter it managed to be a very, very funny show.
Comedy had been Pelham’s salvation ever since he had been a teenager. He’d watched comics like Michael McIntyre, Sarah Millican and Sean Lock on television and loved what he saw.
Until he went to Newcastle University, he had never set-foot in a comedy club. But once he began to perform, he found it was something he loved to do.
“I started when I was 18. Comedy was the way I understood the world around me.
“I was talking about my life. I never had a girlfriend until I was twenty-five. I was living in a squat. I wasn’t doing much with my life.”
He realised part of the problem was that his instinct as a comic was to tell the audience he was fine – when actually he wasn’t.
“I’ve got an avoidant personality.
“There’s also something in comedy about telling the audience that you’re OK. You have to feel safe in order to laugh.”
He went back to therapy and started to understand why he was feeling so unhappy.
“I think one of the things I realised was I hadn’t properly processed things. There was a lot of unprocessed shit.
“I think I realise now that you don’t get over things. You have to live with them.”
Pelham has created a Channel Four documentary series about his experience called ‘Let’s Talk Child Abuse.’ And he’s currently creating a sitcom which also came out of the experience.
He’s in a good place in his personal life, living in Manchester with fellow comic Sophie Willan, who he works with on the sitcom ‘Alma’s Not Normal.’
Writing ‘Optimism Over Despair’ helped him move through the depression. And he knows he’s written a really funny show.
Although there are a couple of explanatory lines in the show about what happened to him as a child, this is not a show which dwells on suffering and hardship but focusses on how we can recover from it and how comedy can help.
“It’s also about how we commodify trauma.”
Thankfully, writing the show has helped him fall in love with comedy again.
“I hope it is the last time I’ll talk about it on stage,” he says.
“The aim is always to make people laugh.”
Johnny Pelham: Optimism Over Despair
18:50
Pleasance Courtyard
August 2 – 27
