My name is Scott Bennett and I am a comedian. That might seem obvious to those who have seen me onstage (unless it was that one night in Wigan which we have all tried to forget) but it’s taken eight years for me to realise this dream. I say it’s a dream, that’s the thing, when you are eighteen and you say you’re going to be a comedian people encourage you, “reach for the stars” they say. When you’re thirty-eight, with a pension a career, a mortgage and a young family, people think you’re having a crisis. I’m still stunned that I have actually made the decision. I’m notoriously risk averse. I was recently in conversation with some other comedians and I asked them what the riskiest thing they’d ever done was. One of them said they do the Pamplona bull run every year in Spain, he said being pursued by a live bull though the streets makes him feel alive, the sky seems bluer, the beer tastes sharper and presumably your soiled underwear smells stronger. The other comedian, climbs frozen waterfalls, his life hanging in the balance with every swing of the axe. They asked me what the riskiest thing is I’ve done to date was. All I could think of was standing in my wheelie bin every week to compress the rubbish, pathetic. Although its worth it for that post bin day beer.

I’ve learnt lot about myself since I took this plunge. Firstly, I am incredibly selfish. I think you have to be to have the drive to survive in the industry. I thought it would like owning your own business, which millions of people do and they manage to balance the stress and still maintain a family life. Doing comedy is different, it’s a part of you, it’s everything you think and feel, all those jokes are a reflection of your own personality and once you’ve started you need it. That validation is an addiction and like with any addiction I’m becoming increasingly scared of what I’m willing to sacrifice for it. People say its brave to do comedy, it’s not, it’s brave to let someone you love do comedy, because you have to suffer the consequences. Many comedians have broken marriages, distant relationships with their children, they’ve missed out on so much, but don’t ever ask them to choose, because they can’t, or more worryingly, won’t.

The facts are that I am more scared of failing at this than I am of the potential impact it will have on my life and the ones I love. I hate wasting opportunities and regret eats me up. I didn’t go travelling when I was younger, mainly through a combination of lack of funds and confidence, but I always wished I had. I don’t want to make that mistake again. Doing comedy means I don’t have a social life, unless you count the occasional chat with an employee of Subway or the nod of recognition to a late-night highways agency worker, but I’ve accepted that.

Real life happens regardless of what is happening in your job, that’s the same for everyone. When you do comedy though, you may have to go on stage and perform after losing a relative or receiving some bad news, it’s not happened to me yet but I know it’s coming and I don’t know how I will cope with that.

It obviously would have been easier to not go through with any of this, I had it all, why couldn’t I just settle for that? Some days I wonder if I have behaved recklessly. I am finding the uncertainty of everything hard to process. When you work in a regular business, you have a path. It’s just a case of working hard enough to progress and then the rewards generally come. Even with your own business there is often tangible outcomes, things you can control. With this job it feels like a leap into the abyss, all you can control is what you say into some microphone five nights a week to complete strangers. What happens if it goes nowhere? Time isn’t infinite and I might never be able to put things right, that thought troubles me. It’s been said that people always focus on the prize, but they never want to endure the process. This is true, they want the glory of scoring the goal, without having to run towards it, but the process is where you challenge yourself, and ultimately find nourishment for the soul.

What is hard though is that I don’t ever want to fail as a father or husband and this is why in some way I think making this decision probably one of the most important things I have done for my children. For the first time in my life I have put it all on the line to chase after something I believe in, I hope they can see that as inspirational, maybe it’ll go someway to compensating them for all those missed moments. Or am I just selfish?