The quiet bit

Okay. Here is the thing I will not say on stage.

I sat in the back room for hours. Just me. The book. A pen. No one to make laugh. No one to be funny for.

I tried to write a letter to my mum. Just "Mum," to start. That is all. One word. And I could not get past it.

I crossed it out. Wrote it again. Crossed it out. Closed the book. Opened it. Closed it again. Then I walked to the bus stop and walked back like a right idiot.

The joke I do on stage, the quiet one, where I go real for a sec? I have been doing it for six years. It gets a laugh. Or it gets that silence that is worse than a laugh. Either way, I am still doing a bit.

I think I am scared that if I stop doing the bit, there is nothing under it. Just a lad from Manchester who can not even finish a letter to his own mum.

That one stays in this book.