Two years ago, my sister was about to turn 50 and I called her spouse to see what he was getting her. He rattled off a number of ideas so catastrophically bad that I was silenced, unable to find the words for how badly he’d erred. He’d booked her a number of short courses, and got her flute repaired so that she could start playing again, having given up in the late 80s. There are two things that my sister absolutely hates, to the point of phobia: one is slugs, and the other is self-improvement. I genuinely thought she might leave him, but figured 50 was young enough for a second act.
It turned out he was right and I was wrong: she is now a member of an orchestra. Running the numbers, he’s lived with her for almost twice as long as I did (they were teenage sweethearts), so I should have considered the possibility that he knew a thing or two. A standup comedy course was even more successful than the flute. She really liked it. She still does it. She’s very funny and, more to the point, incredibly agile. All her material is savage about people she knows well, so if, for instance, she looks out and sees her Mr in the audience, she has to ditch that set immediately and revert to the one in which she destroys her own children.
So, of course I go as often as I can, just to see her white-hot panic as she mentally tears up seven minutes entitled “My sister is an arsehole”, and it’s got to the point where I really like open mic. There’s something about the generosity of the novice performer, where you can still see the fear in their faces and watch them power through it anyway, for no better reason than to make the audience laugh, that flips your brain into a place where everything is funny. Guys in their 30s with overbearing mothers, millennials and their adventures on dating apps, collectors of Star Wars memorabilia, Swedish émigrés with observations on British hygiene – people will tell you anything when it’s a choice between that and dying on stage. It’s like hacking their mainframe.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
