If you don't do loads of gigs, you just sit in cafes going, The Guardian haven't been in yet.

Got three stars from the list if you had anyone from telly.

So I think rather than sitting there, you know, winding doing one show a day, do nine shows a day, you go out there do lots of different things.

So I find it a fascinating experiment every august and on this particular day, the final show that I was doing was one called cheaper than therapy, which was different comics every night, and they were generally the, the idea was that it was to make money for the charity mind and each night, three or four comics would go on and they would do a routine that really vented their spleen or they would actually maybe do a routine that actually was about therapy itself, but how comedy might be used as therapy, but it was generally a stand up show and I said to promote a christian, I said, why don't we as well as doing the stand up bits, why don't we have a conversation afterwards, so that we can broaden out, we don't just have to nail everything to jokes.

So we all did our routines and then there was an interval and it was a place called Gray friars Kirk house, everyone went off to have a drink and it was the normal kind of energetic boozy hubbub of midnight at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and I didn't have a phone.

Everyone else when they walk out, of course, they immediately turned on their phone, what's happened in the hour?

And there was this moment where across the room, it was like a kind of domino effect of silence until until it was quite kind of palpable silence and I didn't know what was going on, but I knew something had happened and I went over to someone that I knew from other gigs, I said, susie, you got what's going on?

Why is everyone so quiet?

And she went, don't you know, I said, no, it's Robin Williams.

Robin Williams has died, he's killed himself.

And it was a genuinely shocking moment.

I think the, it takes a lot to kind of knock out the, the, you know, cheap facetious nous of a bunch of half drunk comics, but that did it, that was everyone was very choir and there was a level of confusion about what happened.

So, you know, there was that level of just shocked because it was someone who was an icon and only two months before rick mail had died, who again was someone that I absolutely adored and was one of the reasons that I I propelled myself into into comedy and I was also interested in Robin Williams because I knew he there was a compassion about him as well.

So the next day I open the newspapers and all of the newspapers go with the same, you know, tears of a clown, another tragic, funny man.

And it turns it into a very, just a singular story and it turned it into a banality.

It turned something which may have been done for many different reasons into, oh well that's just the narrative arc of comedians, isn't it?

And you know, there may be many different reasons that Robin Williams decided to kill himself amongst other things.

Some of you might know he was suffering from a particularly insidious form of dementia called Lewy bodies, dementia.

There's lots of different reasons and I thought with all of these myths about comedians, All of those, I mean BBC four and the channels and they all love that once a year documentary, which will be about Frankie Howard or Tommy Cooper or Peter Sellers or Kenneth Williams, whether Kenneth Williams made the whole of Britain laugh, but he himself was as miserable as sin, right?

And it's this nice, easy kind of a friend of mine, Peter who knew Kenneth Williams in the last few years of his life and he loves reading those stories and in the documentary and then I ring him up and find out what was wrong.

One of his favorites is they go Kenneth Williams always go Kenneth Williams wouldn't allow anyone to use his toilet and peter said that's rubbish.

I used his toilet on loads of occasions.

The only people who didn't allow to use his toilet were people who were beginning to bore him.

So if they were in his flat and Kenneth, can I just go to your louis go, no, you can't get in my toilet, no, he left to go outside and then once they went outside he'd lock the door and when they came back he'd pretend to be asleep.

So this is what I find.

First of all, I find the fact that all human beings are a multitude fascinating and beautiful.

And I also then thought, how interesting is that because of this, the legends of, of comedians, because the myths are so often retold, how much can we learn from the fact that what is true of comedians is probably actually true of an enormous number of human beings we are only represent.

So we are that sometimes the megaphone of the taboos that other people don't want to say, but we go up on stage for two hours and go look at me, here's a weird thing.

I mean I knew that I started to get it right about 10 years ago, I was doing a gig in Nottingham and afterwards a man came up to me and I'm quite annoyed with you.

I said sorry what I've done, He went, well I've just sat in with your audience right and I've spent my whole life believing that I am quite weird.

But sitting with your audience and watching your show, I've realized we're all bloody weird, which means I'm quite normal, which is disappointing.

And that that to me is you know, that that's I mean, I love those moments of of of connection that can occur.

I did a whole show which was about those thoughts that you have, where maybe the example I would often give was you're holding a baby just by a balcony and suddenly out of nowhere you go, oh my goodness, I just imagine throwing the baby over the balcony.

I must be somebody wants to throw babies over balconies.

I shouldn't have a baby in my hands.

You want her back.

Okay.

Right, So, and I would talk to her, I would often say to an audience who's had those kind of thoughts and and very often the hands were quite slow in going up.

And but I I would talk about those things.

Lots of sometimes you have those those thoughts when you're standing on a train station platform, when you're in a car and you imagine grabbing the steering wheel, all of those things.

And I would go off on lots of different tangents.

And but I would then at the end explain that when you have those, it's not because you have an urge, it's quite the opposite at moments of jeopardy like holding a baby near a balcony, your brain plays a public information film it basically, you're holding a baby.

So remember when holding a baby, don't throw it over a balcony, but it delivers it in a slightly cack handed way, so you go, is that a desire?

And this is?

And I would get people coming up to me afterwards.

And there was a lovely one with a lad who was probably in his late teens.

He said, I'm so relieved to find that out.

He said, I've my sister had a baby four months ago and I had this little thought one day and I've been too scared to hold a baby.