But Felicity Ward is tackling taboos until they reveal their funny spots, winning a huge following and exposing an alternative approach to mental health issues – which affect one in four people in the UK.
“I like a challenge,” laughs Felicity, who is appearing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and starts a new BBC Radio 4 comedy series looking into anxiety, depression and irritable bowel syndrome this week, trying to find solutions to her problems using apps.
“I’ve got heaps of issues so why not make the most of them? If you take a subject that is a little more challenging and get people to laugh at it then the pay-off is much greater and more rewarding.”
Felicity has presented documentaries on mental illness and is candid about her own issues but rebuffs any suggestion that her work is a crusade.
“My job on stage is to make people laugh and that’s all I want to do,” says the 37-year-old Australian, who now lives in London.
“I don’t think I’m a voice of anything but I offer something different.
“Professionals talk about mental health even if they don’t necessarily have it or it is spoken about by well-meaning people in the community who are very earnest and serious. The advantage I have is that I’m making jokes from the inside rather than the outside. I have the experience to speak about it and, maybe more importantly, make jokes about it.
“One person emailed me after a show from their doctor’s surgery saying they had been in denial about their anxiety issues but seeing my set made them do something about it.
“I’ve got messages from people who said their parents took them along and, from not being able to talk about their issues, they now have a common language and can make jokes about mental health. It is not something I set out to do but it is a beautiful by-product.
“I’m not trying to change anyone’s lives. My sole purpose is to make people laugh but it feels nice to make jokes about mental health because people don’t joke about it that often.”
Felicity has been a regular on Australian TV but her move into the limelight was stalked by depression, anxiety and IBS which has followed her since her teenage years.
She decided not to hide them and made the acclaimed documentary Felicity’s Mental Mission which challenged public perceptions of mental health conditions.
She has built a huge following on the comedy circuit with a series of sell-out shows and appeared on a string of TV comedy and panel shows.
“A different conversation has developed around mental health over the past five years but people don’t make jokes about it, and understandably so. Yet when people who have it get together and talk to each other, they joke about it and have laughs because our behaviour is crazy at times.
“Part of my comedy is about making an in-joke accessible to people who don’t have mental health issues and they all get in on it. And there are rarely any awkward moments – unless the joke isn’t funny – and people get more uncomfortable when I talk about IBS. It doesn’t actually occur to me to feel embarrassed about the subjects.”
Felicity, who embarks on a national tour in October, has had counselling sessions, cognitive behaviour therapy and indulged in mindfulness apps, which sparked the source material for her Radio 4 show.
It dissects the booming trade that has seen more than 10,000 mindfulness apps crowd the market at a time when official support services are stretched or non-existent in some areas of the UK.
She says: “No one thing works for me and I think that is true for most mentally ill people. The shows are a cheeky look at the apps. They are not serious research but I have listened to an awful lot of self-esteem and IBS apps along the way.
“The comedy is in no way a therapy or cathartic for me. I deal with every serious medical issue I have off-stage with professional help first and only when I feel I have a deep understanding of it and have tools to deal with it, can I talk about it on stage.
“Because of my emotional make up, I don’t want to get half-way through a run and have a sudden realisation, as it wouldn’t turn out well – there is not much of a filter between my brain and mouth.”
