How nerves got to Andy Hamilton

Nerves can trouble any comic. But Outnumbered creator Andy Hamilton recalls an especially violent, recurring bout that afflicted him when he was just getting started in comedy.

Like so many others, he began by penning gags for Radio 4's open-access topical comedy Weekending.

 ‘They had a big writing day on a Thursday when you just had to write till your brain was mush' he told Steve Wright's Radio 2 show.

'I got given a big commission. And every morning, coming in on the Thursday, I'd get on the Tube, and around Green Park on the Victoria Line I'd feel nauseous.

'And the doors would open and I would get off and I would throw up on the platform and get back on the train and go to work. Then I was fine.

'But this happened every Thursday for about five, six weeks, like some Pavlovian thing … the trouble is that I was going in at the same times, so I was seeing the same faces.

'… after a while, I'd get on the carriage and I could just see these people are thinking: "Oh no! It's him!"'

Published: 3 May 2017