Adrenaline focuses the mind'

I'm about to embark on my first stand-up tour in 10 years, Think Ahead.

- GEMMA CALVERT

I've kept doing gigs but not a full tour because my capacity for new material dried up. My wife Katie and I had a third child in 2015, which, in a good way, had quite an impact on the whole family. Soon after, I took an MA course at Goldsmiths College and started to excavate stuff from my past that I'd wanted to talk about, albeit subconsciously, all my life. It led to my 2020 book, Just Ignore Him, where I detailed the abuse I suffered at the hands of my father.

Having shared those stories publicly, doing people-pleasing, skin-deep stand-up felt a bit daft, so my new show incorporates some difficult parts of my childhood and, of course, plenty of hilarious jokes.