Sarah Millican--The Queen of Comedy

by Tina Campanella

  Linda was performing that night in the Customs House, a popular Newcastle venue, and Sarah, a big fan, had tried to get tickets. Smith was understandably popular in the area, because of her ties to the miners, and sadly all the tickets had sold out. Instead Sarah had been placed on a reserve list.

  So when her phone began to ring, and she answered the call through her tears to discover a ticket had become available, Sarah was torn. ‘I thought, “I’m not really in the mood for this but perhaps that’s exactly why I should go,” she has said about that pivotal moment. ‘I can’t do this, I want to sit in the house and eat cake.’

  A few hours later, tears were still streaming down her face – but this time they were tears of laughter. ‘I sat on my own and she was wonderful. I came out and my life was just as shit as when I went in, but for an hour and a half I’d forgotten about it.’

  It was an inspirational moment. It would be a long time before Sarah would be over the trauma of her divorce, but for that hour and a half Sarah experienced the healing power of a good laugh. ‘Laughing is the most important thing,’ she often says. ‘Laughing can take you out of the life that you have.’

  It was the tool she would use to conquer her demons and become that strong feisty woman again – the woman she remembered being, back before her husband broke her heart.

  Sarah duly moved back in with her parents, where she would stay for the next two years: ‘I turned to my loving family who supported me and helped me put my life back together.’

  Back in her old room she must have felt as if she’d gone backwards in her life instead of forwards. She’d been a ‘grown up’ for years. She’d been married and owned her own flat. Yet now she was sobbing on her old bed like she’d done last as a small child. It can’t have helped when her father gently asked her if she wanted her old Philip Schofield posters out of the loft. Sarah had been a big fan of the presenter when she was a child and had pictures of him all over her wall. ‘No. I’m not 14, I’m divorced,’ she chastised.

  Her family cocooned her with love, and her sister in particular was a much-needed source of comfort. She once spent four hours softly stroking Sarah’s hair as she mourned her marriage.

  Philip made endless clumsy attempts to console his youngest child. ‘He’s the most big-hearted, kindly person you could meet but sometimes he doesn’t always think through his wording,’ Sarah explained diplomatically to The Shields Gazette in December 2012.

  She recalled how he once sat her down and said: ‘Well love, you’re bound to be upset. You’ve lost everything. You’ve got nothing left.’ As Sarah herself admits, they weren’t exactly encouraging words, ‘but he was coming from a lovely place’. And those words would hold special meaning for Sarah in years to come…

  At work, her colleagues knew that she was suffering and did everything they could to help. On days when she felt – in her own words – ‘crumpled’, she would cry softly at her desk. ‘I worked with a guy who asked me if there was anything he could do to help. I said, “I really love pictures of animals and clothes”. He saw it as a project. He’d see when I was crying and I’d get an email from him that would have a picture of a pig in slippers. He couldn’t change what was happening, but he could make a little glimmer of a smile every now and again.’

  It was yet more proof that laughter really was the best therapy.

  Over the next few months Sarah took each day as it came. Then, on one of her She-Ra days, she signed up to a new kind of workshop – for people who had written poetry but never performed. And it was at this point that Sarah’s journey to national treasure began…

  By 2004, Kate Fox had been trying to break into the stand-up comedy circuit for years. She had tried all sorts of performance techniques – characters, audience interaction, wearing glasses, not wearing glasses – but none of them had felt natural. Eventually she added funny poems to her set and finally something clicked. She had found her place – as a performance poet.

  Wanting to share her new-found freedom, Kate began running workshops in Newcastle for performers who wanted to try new things. ‘At the first one, a woman did a funny monologue about the divorce she was going through,’ Kate wrote on her blog four years later. ‘Spinning the crap into comedy gold. Pitch perfect punchlines. The audience belly laughed. I said: “You’re a stand-up.”

  That woman, of course, was Sarah Millican.

  Sarah had never exactly lacked confidence; her family had been far too supportive for that to be a character issue. But the ending of her marriage had certainly dented her courage. Couple that with her resolute desire to be heard and not seen – to work behind the scenes, writing and producing – and it’s hard to see what made her sign up to the course in the first place.

  But at the end of the workshop, she performed a monologue which later became the bedrock of her first solo show. ‘I was shaking and some of it was crushingly sad. But some of it was hilarious and the audience responded accordingly.’

  The sound of the applause was exhilarating. Sarah was overwhelmed by the buzz she felt, and instantly decided it was worth the nerves. Organiser Kate was the first to congratulate her. She could see the beginnings of an outstanding talent and the two became firm friends.

  Sarah ran into the ladies toilets and jumped up and down with excitement. Then, of course, she rang her dad to tell him how it had gone.

  For the next six months Sarah continued to write and worked on getting over the split. She read self-help books for inspiration, and was particularly encouraged by It’s Your Life, What Are You Going To Do With It? by Anthony Grant. ‘It was full of exercises that I ignored, but it had a lot of first-hand stories – like, “I was 50 and I got into RADA”.’

  She decided to see a counsellor, to help her work through her anger and upset. ‘I rang the Samaritans at first, who didn’t laugh when I told them not to worry – that I was rubbish at tying knots,’ she later said on Radio 4.

  Before the break-up, Sarah had always thought that counselling was for people who didn’t have a loving and understanding family, and countless friends to ‘cry at’. But Sarah had those things already – and she quickly realised she needed more. ‘I wanted to work through it with someone who could help me fix myself. What I didn’t want was to take all this emotional baggage into my next relationship.’

  It was a wise decision. But as the words poured out of Sarah at each meeting, her counsellor reached one concrete conclusion: Sarah was a naturally funny woman. ‘She kept telling me that what I’d just said was really funny and might make a joke. At the time I was going through this horrible time, but sometimes finding funny things within it,’ she told The Sun in 2012.

  Sarah is now widely known for her jaw-droppingly filthy observations. She has shocked thousands with her tales of broken vibrators, awkward sex and her preoccupation with both male and female genitalia.

  But these open and frank admissions on the subject of sex haven’t always been a part of her personality. In fact, it wasn’t until a post-split trip to Amsterdam that her eyes were opened to the funny side of copulation.

  Thinking that Sarah probably needed a bit of cheering up, one of her friends whisked her off to the Dutch capital for a mini break. The resulting few days were a revelation, and would help shape her views on men and women and the things they did ‘under the covers’.

  Amsterdam is well known for its liberal attitude to sex. A multitude of family-friendly tourist attractions sit side by side with a whirlwind of nude performances, live sex shows, prostitutes plying their trade, and of course, hundreds of sex shops.

  She later described the trip in an interview with The Sunday Times. ‘On the first day, she took me to her favourite sex shop and I remember thinking: “You have a favourite sex shop? I’ve never even been to one.” I just blushed, while she behaved as if she were in a dress store and asked me if I wanted a vibrator to match my coat, but I bought one that didn’t. The rest of the shop was full of things that were a complete mystery to me. It was a real eye-op
ener and quite a good way of coming to terms with divorce.’

  The period following her split with Andrew was the toughest period of her life, but also the most revealing. Sarah had been on a steep learning curve and she now knew that it was time to truly change her life. For Sarah, turning her pain into comedy was therapeutic. An idea had begun to form in her brain, and the better she began to feel, the deeper the idea began to root…

  Six months after her first performance workshop, she picked up the phone and dialed Kate Fox’s number.

  ‘I think I want to try stand-up comedy,’ she told her.

  ‘I know,’ replied Kate. She had been waiting patiently for the call.

  Kate Fox is now a well-respected and highly in-demand stand-up poet and writer. She constantly gigs around the country, in between her stints on Radio 4’s Saturday Live and BBC2’s Politics Show. She’s also incredibly funny.

  She may not have had the fame and fortune that her friend Sarah is currently experiencing – she even openly admits to being a teeny bit jealous – but she is widely credited with being the first person to really send her on her way to stardom. ‘I could clearly see her trajectory there and then,’ Kate has said about seeing Sarah perform for the first time. And Sarah will always be grateful that she saw something in her.

  Kate agreed to find her a stand-up gig and Sarah got off the phone and began to prepare.

  When you break a bone in your body, it heals stronger than it was before. The same can be said of broken hearts. She’s certainly a stronger woman than she was during her married years and she’s no longer ‘coasting along in the middle’, feeling as if she ‘had potential but didn’t really know where it was’.

  She doesn’t blame her ex-husband for the split, despite spending night after night since discussing their divorce on stage. ‘He was my first love. He’s not a bad man, we just fell out of love. It happens to a lot of people and it’s good to be able to handle it. We were very young when we married, but you can’t think, “I shouldn’t have done it”, because if I hadn’t, and then got divorced, I wouldn’t be here now. We were together for seven years so that’s still a long time. I don’t regret it at all.’

  But she doesn’t have anything to do with him either. In fact, she has no idea where he is or what he is doing. ‘There was no need to see him again. We cut off ties. I know some people keep in touch with their exes but I think that’s weird,’ she told The Mirror in 2011. ‘And he’s never contacted me – I guess that makes him a decent person for not coming and knocking once I was famous.’

  In some ways, Sarah thinks the whole sad experience was the best thing that could have happened to her – and comedy was definitely the best form of therapy. ‘It was definitely therapy for the first six months, no doubt about it. If you take anything hard and someone cracks a joke, as long as it is at the right time, it can be cathartic to be able to laugh. It can be a release valve.

  ‘I think anybody who has been through something relatively traumatic tends to throw themselves into work, or they get drunk a lot or sleep around.

  ‘I just decided to try to be funny for a living, to get good enough so someone would pay me. I knew nobody in the industry, had no contacts, and what I like about it is it just proved you can get on in the industry if you are funny, clearly, and work really hard, and learn from any mistakes you make.

  ‘I worked through a difficult time like anybody does and came out of it with a career. Odd but very, very nice.’

  CHAPTER 4

  Standing Up

  ‘An audience not laughing is nothing when your husband’s just told you he doesn’t love you anymore.’

  Kate Fox had seen a lot of raw talent when she first watched Sarah Millican perform her two-minute monologue on divorce. She had been an integral part of Newcastle’s thriving spoken word and open mic scene for a number of years and was used to seeing people give performance art a go, before giving up.

  It’s an exciting but difficult world. Any aspiring comedian or poet will tell you that it involves a lot of waiting around, getting nervous and brightly smiling in the face of sparse but critical audiences.

  But there was something that lifted Sarah above the rest of that Newcastle scene – a spark that Kate could see had enormous potential – and it was for this reason that she booked her a gig at The Dog and Parrot pub in Newcastle.

  It’s one thing when others have faith in you, but it’s quite another to have faith in yourself. And raw talent will only take you so far – Sarah knew she had a lot of work to do to prepare for her first gig.

  She threw herself into it like she had done with every task she performed as a child – diligently. If she was going to do it, she was going to do it the best she could. So she knuckled down and applied her strong work ethic to this new life direction. Delving deep into the pain of her divorce, she began to chart all the darkly funny moments she had experienced since her husband had told her it was over. Then she booked herself into a number of workshops to hone her performance skills.

  These workshops took place in low-key and comfortable surroundings. One was at The Bridge Hotel – a hundred-year-old public house, situated next to the historic High Level Bridge and known for its popular live music nights. Another took place at The Cumberland Arms, which was, at the time, just starting to become a haven for the local comedy scene. It was, and still is, home to The Suggestibles, a talented group of award-winning Newcastle improv comedians, who perform on the last Friday of every month.

  By day Sarah worked in her civil service job, helping others to get back on their feet by finding them work. By night she helped herself to do the very same thing – by working on her first ever stand-up set.

  Finally the big day arrived. Sarah got ready at home, putting on a batwing top, before going downstairs and telling her dad she was off to do a gig. ‘I dressed like I was going to a disco,’ she has since recalled.

  Philip was surprised.

  ‘You? On stage?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘You cannot be serious. You’re the quietest, most reserved person I’ve ever met!’

  His surprised reaction was understandable. But he was also excited and wanted to support his daughter, like he had done throughout her life. Whatever Sarah wanted to do, he wanted be the first person to cheer her on. He asked: ‘Can I come?’

  ‘No you can’t!’ was her swift reply. It was going to be hard enough without having her family in the audience.

  She made her way to The Dog and Parrot, and waited nervously for her turn at the open mic event. It had been organised by Kate as part of her New Word Order project, which ran from 2004 to 2010. Kate acted as compere for the regular events, introducing a variety of acts for short five-minute slots. It was a chance to test material out and gauge audience response and was perfect for Sarah’s first time on stage.

  Located on Newcastle’s Clayton Street, close to the main train station, The Dog and Parrot now bills itself as the city’s only indie rock and roll bar. It’s a cool, relaxed environment, dedicated to good music, and is an avid supporter of the local live singing and comedy scene. It recently won the Chortle award for Best Northern Comedy Venue, because of its regular comedy slot Long Live Comedy.

  Comedians who have performed there include Kai Humphries, former Byker Grove actor Phil Harker, and Dan Willis – better known as Harold Bishop from Neighbours, who has been performing there in his infamous specs and leather jacket for years.

  Sarah had never been to a comedy club before taking to the stage at The Dog and Parrot. ‘I’d seen two tours of comedians, in one of the big theatres, but I’d never been in a comedy club,’ she has admitted. ‘In some way it helped. Some comics see loads of comedy but it means at times they end up emulating people they admire. But because I had not seen anyone like that, it was just all about me. Everything I ever do is personal and entirely factual or based on fact and then exploded for comic effect.’

  When Kate announced Sarah’s name, she walked out to face the 50 people in the audience. I
t was the first time that anyone would have seen the timid looking bespectacled brunette ply her new trade. It was the first time anyone would have heard her sweetly soft, high-pitched, lilting tone, delivering her now infamously sarcastic wit.

  One of Sarah’s early reviews said that she ‘looks like a primary-school teacher with the mouth of a biker’, which she has always quite liked. ‘It’s better than being the other way round,’ she has since said. The audience must have wondered what this demure looking girl was doing on the stage.

  Pale and quiet, she began to speak.

  For the first two-and-a-half minutes, arms were folded and not a chuckle was heard in the crowd. One woman who was in the audience that night blogged about what she saw, saying: ‘She was quiet and I thought a little aloof (as some talented performers seem to be). I thought her material was funny with a cynical edge; the guy next to me complained.’

  Undeterred, Sarah thought back to her family and their clumsy attempts to soothe her broken heart. She began to tell the audience a familiar story… sobbing in a flood of tears and snot, her husband had just told her he was leaving. Doing an impression of her father, she said: ‘Well you’re bound to be upset.’

  Then she paused.

  ‘You’ve lost everything.’

  She paused again.

  ‘You’ve got nothing left!’

  And with those poignant words, the small crowd erupted into fits of laughter. The combination of tone and timing in her impersonation of a practical Geordie man trying to cope with an emotional landslide was instant comedy gold. The audience was finally hers. Enthused, Millican poured out more of the same, and as her confidence grew, the chuckles kept coming.

  She has since said of that night: ‘It was a tough audience. For two-and-a-half minutes no one laughed and that felt like a lifetime. Then I described how my marriage broke up, how I moved back home with my parents and how my dad tried to comfort me as I was sobbing all day, every day. The room went from silence to a massive laugh and I thought, “Right, that’s going at the beginning.”’