Sara Pascoe's comedy career started by accident.
Sara Pascoe never set out to be a stand-up comedienne
The 42-year-old comedienne has enjoyed great success in stand-up but initially wanted to be an actress and initially believed that comics made it all up on the spot before realising it was something she could do.
Speaking on the 'Table Manners' podcast, she told hosts Jessie and Lennie Ware: "It wasn't a conscious decision. It was a meander, it was an accidental thing. I was trying to be an actor, I'd always wanted to be an actor. I was auditioning for drama school, trying to do all these jobs that were acting adjacent like Theatre in Education, or working in old people's homes doing plays. That's what I really wanted to do and then I was doing a topical sketch show. There was this boy in it doing stand-up comedy and I had never been to see it. I thought stand-up comedy was improvised. I thought Jack Dee was making it all up or Billy Connolly just went on stage like 'Hey, a funny thing happened on the way here...'"
The '8 Out Of 10 Cats' star - who eventually made it as an actress in late 2000s drama series 'Being Human' and 'The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret' - then recalled knowing instantly she could follow a career when she went to a gig and found her way into the industry with under the guise of a character.
She said: "And then I went to watch a gig with all these lads in raincoats with pads...they weren't very good! But I was like 'Oh I could do that!' And I did stand-up for a while as a character so I did it as an acting thing to try and keep my hand in while I was temping doing proper work. I had Mrs Nudie, who was kind of this detective who was naked under her coat. She solved crimes and I'd put all these clues underneath the audience's chairs and they had to solve it."
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