FunnyNotFunny Challenge

A safety net with a giant hole in it is really quite slapstick, when you think about it. Is this why we're still making jokes when we need to raise £25,000, right now, to save B's life?

B and I make a lot of jokes even - and perhaps especially - when neck-deep in the most horrendous of challenges.

There’s a surfeit of set-ups and punchlines in a situation where everybody does the exact opposite of their job title, and the services that officially exist to save people are actually designed to kill them.

The notion of a safety net with a giant hole in it is really quite slapstick, when you think about it.

In fact, in this life-threatening limbo/hostage situation that B has been enduring for years now, the level of farce is pitched so consistently high it feels like if you tried to write it into a comedy show you’d have to tone it down for fear of it seeming contrived for cheap laughs.

I think one day we will try to write some kind of comedy-drama show about it, retrospectively. It can’t happen until B is safe and she’s no longer spending every waking moment having a panic attack or a migraine; grappling with dislocated collarbone/ribs/pelvis/fingers/sense of self; and fighting for her basic human right to a safe home while fundraising for the extortionate rent on a temporary place so she can try and stay alive until she gets one.

I mention the fighting and the fundraising, but having time to actually spend on those has been a luxury lately because the precious hours we set aside for it have instead been spent on hold to DWP trying to find out why they’ve randomly stopped B’s ESA disability benefit. More than 10 hours we spent on the phone, only to be told it was a mistake and the payments would resume. Except they didn’t. She is too unwell to speak to them unless someone’s there with her, and they won’t speak to me on her behalf, and they offer no other way of contacting them.

Imagine any service or business refusing to use email in the year 2025. It’s only the DWP. Oh, and the old man in Sussex who repairs sewing machines. *Insert quip about the fabric of our society here*.

We’re so busy with the time-and-energy-draining demands placed on B from all sides, by the organisations ostensibly set up to help her, that we’re rarely able to actually fundraise for the life-saving money she needs, let alone write a show.

So the story remains untold, just like they want it.

For now we just keep ourselves grimly entertained with our own real-time reactions to the situation. These sometimes come out in the form of gallows-humoured zingers, and sometimes spontaneous DIY punk songs — a medium we started exploring years ago with the impromptu ditty “Ten Cunts”. (I’m sure all the great maestros remember where they were when they composed their first hit, and I’m no different: it was while being cut up at a mini roundabout in Bristol, driving B back from a soul-destroying gaslighting sesh of a GP appointment.) We’ll record them one day, if B lives long enough to get a home and access the specialist healthcare she needs for her genetic health condition, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

I’m taking a break from doing stand-up gigs at the moment.

This is so I could increase my - overwhelming yet always inadequate - efforts to fundraise and support B in her quest to convince the state to help her stay alive (or at least, stop actively trying to kill her; you do learn to set the bar quite low after a while).

Stand-up is the latest part of my life that I’ve had to slim down to try and focus on all this, having already resigned myself to a dwindling social calendar, a dip in work hours/income and the occasional sleepless night thinking about how I’m doing it all wrong. It’s bizarrely similar to the stuff that new parents moan about, but without the good bits like fun new hormones and having a weird baby profile pic.

I was thinking about the knock-on impact B’s situation has had on my own situation, how constantly worried yet helpless I feel, and how hard it is to explain the horrors of her life to people who aren’t up close to it. I realised I felt desperate to try and make them understand.

I started to want to share jokes about it.

[Vid: FunnyNotFunnyChallenge video as on my insta / Tiktok]

I can’t do material about B’s ordeal from her perspective, and I wouldn’t try. Even when I wrote an impact statement for the Housing Ombudsman on her behalf, which ran to 20,000 jokeless words and must’ve taken me 100 hours, I only captured a glimpse of it.

I can’t get up and make jokes as if I know her experience, or that of other disabled and/or homeless people, because I don’t.

(Seriously, if you catch me trying to ‘splain marginalised people’s experiences for them - or to them - as if I get it, consider it your civic duty to build a time machine, go back to September 1982, and stop my parents from conceiving me. Nothing too drastic — show them a home video of Margaret and Denis Thatcher or something.)

But here’s the thing - B is so unwell, so incapacitated by said ordeal that she can’t talk about it herself.

So the story remains untold, just like they want it.

It’s become a big part of my life, though, and I can write material about that. It’s been hard seeing my marvellous best mate being gradually eroded by the state over years and years, and desperately trying to help her mount a David vs Goliath challenge against them, all the while fearing that if I mess up she’ll die. It’s hard to watch her situation and her fragile health continue to deteriorate, and wonder if it’s just a case of things getting worse before they get better or… if I might actually be the problem.

I don’t know what I’m doing; have I over-promised? What weird flavour of arrogance or messiah complex made me think that I, a deeply unserious person with a newly minted ADHD diagnosis who has never seen a project through in her whole life, could do this?

I guess what made me think I could do it was the fact I fucking had to. If we break that down we might find a mix of anger, desperation, a strong urge to stick a boot into some corporate scumbags, and just loyalty and love for my friend. While I dearly wish it wasn’t happening to her, I am relieved I’m in a position to at least try and do something about it. But it is - and I cannot stress this enough - hard.

I can try to process it by writing material about it, but if I’m not out there performing it’s not connecting with anyone.

Welcome to the FunnyNotFunnyChallenge: where we turn life’s bullshit into laughs.

All this got me thinking about the importance of comedy as a means of communicating about our difficult, sad, unfair, rage-inducing or isolating experiences. The unfunny bullshit of life.

So welcome to the FunnyNotFunnyChallenge: where we turn life’s bullshit into laughs.

There may be people who say that some subjects are just. not. funny. But we mustn’t accept that the only stories fit for a comedy stage are the easy ones, the ones of the people who’ve had the most frictionless ride through life. That sounds like a convenient way of keeping marginalised voices suppressed and maintaining a power structure.

So the story remains untold, just like they want it.

But hey… the #FunnyNotFunnyChallenge is a silly social media video sharing stunt! I came up with it as a fun way for people to engage and help me get more eyes on the fundraiser.

But more than that, it’s a platform for us all to turn life’s bullshit into laughs and to share and air some of our boldest, most creative and funniest jokes.

But even more than that, it’s a stark reminder of the fact that all my comedian friends are technophobes, procrastinators and borderline boomers (luv u guys xoxo), who will fail to grasp the concept of instagram’s “Sequence” feature no matter how clearly I think I’ve explained it or how much they usually love posting videos of themselves being funny on the internet.

I can’t blame them tbh - I’d never heard of it until a 21-year-old showed me it.

I’m sure it’ll get off the ground though — I’m a very determined (some might say deluded) person. And I am genuinely excited about seeing the jokes that people share.

• Read more about B’s story, share it, and donate, via the GoFundMe. Her next rent payment of £2340 for her life-saving emergency temporary accommodation is due 28th March, and as of now she’s frozen with terror not knowing how she’s going to pay it.

• Get involved and add your videos to the #FunnyNotFunnyChallenge on my TikTok or Instagram.

• Listen to me and four brill comedians digging into difficult comedy on the recent #FunnyNotFunny special episode of Hack City, my show on Slack City radio about the stand-up scene in Brighton and beyond. We get together to dissect their darkest or most vulnerable material. Between London-based Canadian Mike Sheer, Worthing-based Australian Marti Delon, Portslade-based Lithuanian Vaiga Perkauskaite and Brighton-based Brit Dave Fensome, it’s an impressively bleak array of life experience lolz encompassing bereavement, breakdown, suicide, sexuality and the Soviet Union. Click on the image below to stream it.