Comedy is a serious business for those who choose it as a career.
All comedians, even the biggest names, can suffer from pre-show nerves and middle-of-the-night worries about their careers.
But, from my experience and knowledge about the history of making audiences laugh, most comedians are able to cope with these insecurities.
That great entertainer Des O’Connor once told a friend of mine, “Hosting a Royal Variety Performance can be a terrifying experience, with so much responsibility on your shoulders. But as nervous as I am before the curtain goes up, I wouldn’t swap my job with anyone!”
However, that same friend confided that one of the nicest comedians he’s worked with was, despite having a beautiful wife and a rather grand house in Surrey, a manic depressive who needed to be constantly reassured about his comedic talents.
The public adored Tony Hancock when he was at the top, but he wasn’t a happy man and eventually ditched his brilliant writers Galton and Simpson to search for ‘the true essence of comedy’.
Had he realised he’d already found it in Ray and Alan’s scripts, he may not have entered that downward spiral that led to him becoming so depressed that he took his own life.
Always a nervous performer, Larry Grayson often made reference to his sweaty top lip in his act, while Spike Milligan suffered from long periods of depression all his life, possibly rooted in his wartime experiences.
So, you can see that having to maintain a career in comedy, either as a performer or writer, can take its toll.
Such was the popularity of ‘King Of Clowns’ Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837) his shows at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and Sadlers Wells were always sold out.  He created the white-faced make-up still used by circus clowns referred to as Joeys.
During the run of one of Grimaldi’s spectacular pantomimes, a man went to his doctor complaining he felt permanently depressed.
The doctor said “That’s easily remedied. Go and see Grimaldi at Sadlers Wells and he’ll cheer you up!”
To which his patient replied . . . “I am Grimaldi!”

Remember when every house in Wales seemed to have a front room permanently packed with visitors? Ours certainly did.
Neighbours, distant relatives, the rent man, the Man from the Pru,  even the bailiffs occasionally popped in. It was less of a living room and more of a revolving cast from a sitcom. And Aunty Glad? She was fuelled almost entirely by Dubonnet.
As a gangly 10-year-old, I spent many evenings wedged under the dining table, listening to adults put the world to rights.
Politics, religion, nuclear war and the eternal argument over how to serve a scone, all discussed at full volume, usually at the same time.
Not surprisingly, I often misheard things.
When someone declared, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” I was convinced they’d said, “Neither a borrower nor a Brenda Lee,” and wondered what the Christmas singer had done to upset them.
Then there was Uncle Hugo, a fearless explorer if you believed his stories. I distinctly remember him saying, “There are flies, damn flies and stick insects,” while describing his expedition up the River Tawe.
Apparently, he’d actually said, “There are lies, damn lies and statistics.”
Mind you, Uncle Hugo was always full of surprises. We still call him my late uncle. He’s not dead,  he’s just never on time.
Experts reckon there’ll be more than two billion over-60s by 2050. At this rate, the queue at the Post Office will stretch to Carmarthen, and my chances of a full house at bingo will disappear faster than Aunty Glad’s bottle of Dubonnet.  Now those really were the good old days!

The 1969 film “When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth” (inaccurately) depicted primitive men and women living alongside prehistoric monsters.
But . . . dinosaurs do live among us today.
People with opinions that are positively antediluvian and so dim that they’re unable to keep their archaic notions to themselves.
A mate of mine (let’s call him Dave) shared this story, which proves not all dinosaurs are extinct.
Dave had been shopping with his wife for a couple of hours and needed ‘a sit down’.
While his better half continued shopping, he found a bench inside the lobby of a supermarket.
The sole occupant was a man who’d obviously claimed the bench for his personal use, having spread his roll-up cigarette paraphernalia across the spare seat.
When Dave asked if he could sit down, the man muttered something under his breath before reluctantly picking up his belongings.
Watching the man continue to roll-up, Dave hoped he knew it was illegal to smoke inside a supermarket!
Then the man asked Dave where he lived and, after he told him, Dave recalls the conversation went like this . . .
MAN: “You’re a long way from home. Do you drive?”
DAVE: “No. My wife does.”
MAN: “That would put me off for a start!”
DAVE: “Sorry!?”
MAN: “I’d never get in a car with a woman driver!”
DAVE: “My wife’s been driving for more than 35 years. She’s an  excellent driver.”
MAN: “She can’t be if she’s a woman!”
DAVE: “That’s a very old-fashioned view.”
MAN: “Women are terrible drivers. It’s a fact!”
Dave now realised he was in the presence of a prize idiot.
DAVE: “So, if you had to be rushed to hospital and the ambulance driver was a woman, you’d refuse to get in?”
Cogs creaked and turned inside the man’s head.
MAN: “Women don’t drive ambulances!”
DAVE: “What!? They’ve been driving them since World War Two.”
More cogs turned.
MAN: “Yeah, well, maybe they did then!”
Silence for a moment.
DAVE: “I assume you’re no fan of Emily Pankhurst?”
MAN: “Nah! I haven’t watched ‘Top Of The Pops’ for years!”
Dave had discovered a new species of dinosaur –
Ignoramus Rex!

People often assume writers live highly organised lives.
Calm mornings. Neatly arranged desks. Deep intellectual thoughts while sipping artisan coffee beside a spotless laptop.
Then there’s me . . .
My brain operates less like a sophisticated creative studio and more like a supermarket trolley with one broken wheel hurtling downhill into traffic.
For years, I’ve carried around little black notebooks everywhere I go because my mind refuses to behave like a normal person’s.
Ideas arrive at completely inappropriate moments. In queues. On trains. Halfway through conversations. Occasionally, during sleep itself.
If I don’t write them down immediately, they disappear into the universe forever, alongside missing socks and passwords you were certain you’d remember.
At this point, I own around 60 notebooks, which means my house now resembles the archive room of a detective who’s been investigating nonsense for decades.
Inside these books are thousands of observations, jokes and fragments of thoughts that made perfect sense at the time. Reading them back later is like trying to decode messages from a deeply confused time traveller.
One note simply reads: “Man arguing with seagull. Seagull winning.”
Another says: “Why do dads become airport security managers at 4am?”
Apparently, at some point, I considered both Pulitzer material.
The truth is, this is how my mind works all day long.
I notice tiny ridiculous details most people walk past.
Awkward conversations. Strange behaviour. The bloke in Tesco talking passionately to avocados. The woman aggressively overtaking pensioners with a trolley like she’s qualifying for Silverstone.
My brain collects these moments constantly, whether I want it to or not.
The downside is chaos.
My handwriting now looks like a doctor filling out a ransom note during an earthquake. Some nights I wake up convinced I’ve had a genius idea, only to discover I’ve scribbled something incomprehensible like “sad penguin energy.”
But, honestly, I wouldn’t change it.
Because . . . somewhere inside all that madness, confusion and random observations is the strange little engine that keeps me laughing, writing and making sense of the wonderfully bizarre world around us.

Poetry was something I never ‘got’. Like ‘rap’, I thought it would be improved considerably by adding music and calling it a song.
Although . . . Spike Milligan’s take on John Masefield’s ‘Sea Fever’ always makes me smile.

“I must go down to the sea again
To the lonely sea and sky.
I left my vest and socks there.
I wonder if they’re dry?”

Limericks, on the other hand, hold great appeal to me.
I find them funny, often clever and, unlike most poems, mercifully short.
Like this one . . .

There was an old man from Bengal
Whose wife was exceedingly tall.
He was three-foot shorter
Than their five-foot daughter
So you could hardly see him at all!

Traditional poetry was never on my radar (or my reading list!) until a news item caught my attention about a poem that, although unfamiliar to me, has apparently touched many people over the years.
Often mistakenly credited to the prolific ‘Anon’, it was, in fact, written during World War Two by a man working for British Intelligence, as a code poem for Allied agents dropped behind enemy lines, in particular Violet Szabo, whose story of unbelievable courage was recounted in the 1958 film “Carve Her Name With Pride”, in which she was portrayed by Virginia McKenna (who was 95 on June 7!).
Cryptographer and poet Leo Marks wrote the poem “The Life That I Have” to honour his dead fiancée and, I have to say, his poem, unlike those by other poets I’ve read, actually touched me.
So much so, my opinion of poetry completely changed. When I did some research into Leo’s work, I was astonished to read that he also wrote the screenplay for the grisly, controversial (and still hard to watch) 1960 film “Peeping Tom”.
He must have been multi-talented to pen that and the poem that has touched so many people.
Here it is . . .

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have,
Is yours.
The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

With summer holidays looming and half of Britain currently arguing in airport queues over the correct dimensions of a cabin bag, one local traveller has declared that travel remains “the best thing for the human mind since someone invented putting gravy on chips”.
Experts say travel broadens the mind.
It also empties the bank account, destroys your sleep pattern and occasionally leaves you standing barefoot at airport security while a stranger inspects your deodorant.
But apparently, it’s all worth it!
For some lucky people, travel comes with work attached, which is essentially the modern version of winning the Euromillions.
While the rest of us are battling rush hour traffic and wondering if we can survive another Teams meeting, these fortunate souls are wandering through Edinburgh watching street performers dressed as silver robots pretending not to need the toilet.
And, according to seasoned travellers, the real joy isn’t just seeing new places, it’s people watching.
Every city offers its own fascinating wildlife. In London, it’s commuters aggressively speed walking while holding Pret coffees.
In airports, it’s dads loudly announcing gate numbers as though they personally built Terminal 5.
Travel also provides valuable perspective.
Nothing makes you appreciate your own bed quite like spending three nights in a hotel room where the air conditioning sounds like a helicopter attempting to take off!
But, while many embrace adventure, there is one holiday trend still dividing the nation: camping.
Despite thousands claiming they “love getting back to nature,” critics remain unconvinced.
One local man described camping as “paying money to sleep badly outdoors while a mosquito drinks your body weight in blood”.
He added: “If I wanted discomfort, strange smells and limited washing facilities, I’d visit a music festival.”
Still, travel in any form remains a glorious escape from modern chaos. Whether it’s a luxury city break or a rainy weekend in Wales, sometimes all you really need is a change of scenery, and a hotel mattress thicker than a yoga mat.

The other day, while contemplating what to write about this week, a song came on the radio I hadn’t heard for years.
“Funny How Time Slips Away” is a reflective ballad about lost love and regrets.
I couldn’t identify the singer, but the presenter said the composer was Willie Nelson, which I once thought was a particularly painful wrestling hold.
I left the house, got in my car and the first song on the car radio was Jim Croce’s haunting “Time In A Bottle”.
The opening lines, “If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do, is save every day ‘til eternity passes away, just to spend them with you” are all the more poignant when you remember that, a few days after he died in a car accident, Jim’s wife found a letter he’d written telling her he intended to stop touring and spend more time with her and their son.
Two entirely different songs that remind us that time passes so quickly.
In fact, it’s passing right now, so once you’ve read this, go and do something interesting!
But cheer up!
Here’s an amusing story about the passing of time.
Tommy Trinder was one of our greatest comedians in his day and the original compere of “Sunday Night At The London Palladium”.
For years he headlined summer seasons, usually from early June to late September, in resorts like Eastbourne, Margate and Bournemouth.
Wherever he’d be working for the summer, his wife would drive him there, ensure his accommodation was of a suitable standard and stay with him for the rehearsals and the opening night.
The following day, after kissing him goodbye, she always warned him, “Now Tommy. You watch yourself with those chorus girls!” before driving back to Fulham, leaving Tommy to pack in the punters, until the end of the season when she’d return to collect him.
This went on for years, until one June morning as she left, she said, “Now, Tommy. You watch yourself crossing the road!”
Proof indeed that time can slip right away . . .

There was near panic on the Llanelli coastal path last Tuesday after a local man was reportedly seen smiling before 9am.
Witnesses feared he’d either won the lottery or managed to get an NHS dentist appointment.
As it turned out, he’d simply gone for a summer walk towards Burry Port and accidentally experienced joy.
“Yes, the weather was that nice,” he confirmed, shielding his eyes from what experts identified as “the sun.”
With schools soon breaking up and half of Carmarthenshire currently posting airport pints on Facebook with captions like “Here we gooooo!”, the annual debate has returned: why are thousands of us paying £1,400 to sit sweating beside a hotel pool in Benidorm when Wales is sitting here looking like a live action tourism advert?
Local economists estimate the average family now spends roughly the GDP of a small principality on airport parking alone.
Meanwhile, in Wales, parking is only mildly traumatic and comes with free sea air.
Take Mumbles seafront.
One sunny afternoon there and suddenly your blood pressure drops faster than a politician’s promise after election week.
Add an ice cream and a gentle breeze and you’re basically in a mindfulness retreat, except nobody’s charging you £87 to “reconnect with your inner self.”
Even the seagulls here have character.
In Spain, they steal chips.
In Llanelli, they look you directly in the eye first, like tiny feathery debt collectors.
And let’s not ignore the scenery.
The coastline between Llanelli and Burry Port is so beautiful it genuinely makes people stop mid-scroll on TikTok. Scientists are calling it “rare.”
So now comes the challenge: give your top three reasons people should spend summer in Wales.
Bribery, emotional blackmail and exaggerated claims about the quality of local chips are all welcome.
Because, honestly, who needs a delayed Ryanair flight when you’ve got sunsets over Carmarthen Bay and only a 20-minute queue for a 99?

That fine singer Matt Monro had a string of hits here and across the ‘Pond’, where Frank Sinatra helped establish his name.
When Matt scored his first hit “Portrait Of My Love” in 1960 he already had several club bookings in his diary and even thought he’d become a ‘name.
He appeared on prestige TV shows. He was contractually obliged to appear at all the venues his agent had booked him into, no matter how small the club . . . and the fee.
So it was that, with a No3 record to his name, Matt set out for the long drive to a social club in a mining town ‘Oop North’.
It was dark when he reached the town, but he couldn’t find the venue for love nor money.
After fruitlessly driving around for an hour, he pulled up outside a suburban house and knocked on the door. When a man opened it, Matt asked if he could please tell him how to get to the club in question.
The man said “Thee’s got thy-sen reet lost, me duck. Just down t’road, you’ll see church on t’left. Tek first left, third right and fourth left and you can’t miss it!”
Matt, still figuring out the directions, thanked the man and walked away. Then he heard the man say, “But thee’l not get in’t club toneet, lad”.
When Matt asked why, the man said, “That Matt Monro’s singing there!”
One more quick one . . .
Comedy actor Peter Butterworth was more than a stalwart of the Carry On films.
He was a brilliant panto dame and had a bone dry sense of humour.
He once found himself surrounded by a group of ‘bright young’ BBC producers in a Green Room, who spent half an hour discussing the merits of foreign cinema.
During this time, no one had spoken to Peter, but he was too polite to walk away and join a more friendly group.
Suddenly one of the producers said, “Peter. Have you seen Fellini’s ‘Eight And A Half?’” to which Peter responded with a straight face . . . “No. But I have heard the rumours!”

People often ask me how I manage to write a newspaper column every single week.
The answer is surprisingly simple: I refuse to leave my computer until I’ve written one. That’s it. No inspirational walks. No deep meditation. No artistic soul-searching. I simply sit there staring at the screen until my brain gives up and produces something vaguely entertaining.
It probably helps that I see the world from a slightly skewed angle.
While normal people walk through life peacefully, I spend most of my time becoming irrationally irritated by phrases, signs and everyday nonsense.
Take the expression “going forward.”
What was wrong with saying “in the future”?
Why does everyone now sound like they’re chairing a business seminar in a motorway hotel?
Then there’s the phrase “my bad.” I absolutely cannot stand it.
“My bad” what exactly? Your grammar? Your decision-making? Your complete betrayal of the English language?
The first celebrity I remember saying it regularly was Jonathan Ross, who always seemed eager to adopt Americanisms. Mind you, his infamous phone call with Russell Brand mostly involved words your grandmother wouldn’t allow at the dinner table.
I briefly considered learning a proper trade once. An electrician perhaps. Then I realised there’s probably a reason society prefers qualified people handling live wiring. Although, for fifty quid cash, I’d still be willing to give your house a go.
Admittedly, there’s a fair chance the toaster would activate every time someone flushed the toilet.
My latest annoyance came during a trip to the bank. Above the counter was a sign reading: “Assisted Counter Service.”
Assisted? Isn’t helping customers literally the point of counter staff? Then every customer was asked, “Have you tried online banking?”
One elderly gentleman replied, “No! Because if we all banked online, this place would shut and you’d all lose your jobs!”
I laughed so much I nearly dropped my shopping bag and frightened the cashier.