How a red coat and thinking rich gave me a comic career kickstart

C'mere, there's more from the Post's funniest columnist

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Hi readers, I hope you've had a nice Christmas. I didn't do a panto this year... Well, last year I played the front end of Daisy the cow and I thought I'd better quit while I was a head!

New Year can be a time of reflection, and I was thinking back recently to my adolescence.

I left St Patrick's secondary school in Belfast when I was 15, and as my dad had passed away when I was only eight years old, my mammy asked my older brother John to take me to see a youth employment adviser.

As I had absolutely no qualifications, this was always going to be a tricky interview - and so it turned out.

He started by asking what I would like to do, and when I told him I had a vague notion about being a newspaper reporter, he went into a five-minute rant, telling me it was a goal I would never achieve in a million years, and I was stupid to even entertain such an idea.

He gave me no positive encouragement whatsoever, and looking back now I can see the whole irony of the situation - here was a guy employed to help young people find the right job and he was in the wrong job himself!

So how did I come to prove this chap wrong, and carve out a decent living in the entertainment profession, I hear you ask?