Do You Have To Be Mad To Be Funny?
Very Interesting|May - June 2017

The way a comedian’s brain works is subtly different to the rest of us

Robin Ince
Do You Have To Be Mad To Be Funny?

Public speaking is thought so wretched a torture that it ranks as more stressful than moving house, and more horrible than being cooked alive in lard while a drunk celebrity chef clumsily spatchcocks you with skewer after skewer. Therefore, those uninfected with the desire to make rooms of strangers laugh often see the comedian as a diseased anomaly.  When I made a documentary about comedians and melancholy a couple of years ago, Jo Brand told me that she didn’t necessarily think all the comics she knew were categorically mentally ill, but that most were “damaged people”.

This story is from the May - June 2017 edition of Very Interesting.

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This story is from the May - June 2017 edition of Very Interesting.

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