14 Problems Only Comedians Will Understand

12. Studying Your Own Failure Is The Only Way To Get Better

As just mentioned, to get better, you have to do badly. Loads of badly.

I started writing comedy in 2008 and looking back at my work from that period makes me what to ball myself to death with an ice-cream scoop.

Most comics record themselves at each gig and play it back after the show, and there's nothing more dispiriting than having to listen back to yourself bombing. But you have to. You have to work out why your killer vagina joke didn't land. Was it the inflection, the sentence structure, the fact that your audience weren't drunk students? You figure it out.

Then rewind and play it again, every last cringeworthy moment.

But even doing that ...