Angela Barnes: 'My comedy career was a parting gift from my dad'
Comedian Angela Barnes may be known for her appearances on panel shows like Mock the Week and News Quiz but she’s staying away from the topical agenda with her latest tour Angst.
"It’s difficult at the moment because the news is so bleak. I didn’t want to do a show about those big topical things. I think people need an escape in comedy rather than have it reinforced,” the 49-year-old says.
Instead, Angst draws on Barnes’ life as a ‘worrier’. "Sometimes, particularly with anxiety, laughing at things can take the power out of them a bit,” she explains. "I’m quite an anxious person and always have been my whole life. I have a hyper-connected brain so I have a lot of thoughts very quickly which makes me an anxious person. But I think we’re all anxious at the moment – if you’re not anxious, you’re not paying attention. My philosophy though is worry about the small stuff because that’s the stuff you have control over.
"Angst is a funny show full of jokes. I want people to come and have a good laugh, forget about their anxieties and laugh at mine. I want them to come away feeling better about their own lives because they can think at least I’m not her.”
Like many comedians, Barnes mines her own life for content. All of her shows have drawn from her lived experiences but this one, she says, is her most personal yet. “It’s about what goes on in my head and I think quite a lot of it is relatable.”
There are many interesting elements of her life, some of which she discusses in the show. She, for example, received a couple of later in life diagnoses including ADHD and synaesthesia – a condition where two or more of the senses that are normally experienced separately are involuntarily mixed together. For Barnes, it means abstract concepts like people’s personalities, days of the week and numbers have specific colours.
The Hastings-based comedian also had a previous career in health and social care, working predominantly in mental health and substance misuse. It was only when her father died suddenly, aged 60, in 2008 that she considered leaving it behind for the stage.
"It makes you go oh gosh life is short, what do I actually want to do? He was a really big comedy fan, we used to watch live comedy together, watch comedy on the telly, listen to it on the radio. I used to do am-dram and he always said to me why don’t you have a go at stand up...after he died I thought maybe I should.”
Barnes, who is performing in Bradford for the first time next month, did a stand-up comedy course the following year, then began to make it her focus 15 years ago. “It felt a bit like that was the final gift really from my dad,” she reflects. “The sadness is he never got to see me do it and he would have loved it. I know he would have been really proud. But I don’t think if he was still here I would ever have taken the plunge. It was like his parting gift to me really.”
- Angela Barnes, Angst, is at The Studio, Bradford on February 26. For tickets, visit bradford-theatres.co.uk/whats-on/angela-barnes-angst