Comedians Juliet Cowan and John Meagher make their Fringe debut this year. Here they write about how they slid into comedy.
This funny old thing we call life
Juliet Cowan
I was jiggling along ok with my life. I was a working actress and married with three kids. I’d been experiencing some loss of confidence, anxiety and sore feet, but I couldn’t blame everything on the perimenopause
One day, out of the blue, the last man I kissed before I got married rang me (from prison) and told me he loved me - and so it all began; the catapult that propelled me into the next episode of my life.
I left my husband for this man (once he was released from prison) and the storms began. He told me he had a casual girlfriend (who I came to affectionately call fun-loving, homicidal Tina) he was too tender-hearted to break up with. So I told her about us and she wasn’t happy.
Over the next 6 months she sent me and my boyfriend hundreds of texts a day pretending to be my husband threatening to kill us. To my husband she sent texts pretending to be my boyfriend. She made Facebook accounts called things like Juliet Cowan A Dirty Bitch and sent pornographic messages to my Facebook friends. She developed arm cancer and then when that was cured, leg cancer, insisting my boyfriend drive her to her doctor’s appointments. She sent fire engines, pizzas and ambulances to my house.
Once I was filming in Yorkshire, pretending to give birth in a children's show. Between takes I'd call my kids. One time they informed me they’d been subject to an armed police raid and were all made to lie on their faces.
Eventually her best friend confessed to my boyfriend that not only was SHE in love with him, but the campaign of terror had been organised by his ex girlfriend who was trying to lay the blame on my husband and cause more animosity between them.
Now can you see why I was trying to haul in the perimenopause? The madness is over now. Fun-Loving Homicidal is back home, my husband and kids are now speaking to me again and I am very contrite and have had to take to comedy to make any sort of sense of this funny old thing we call life.
John Meagher
Where I grew up we didn’t have any open mic nights, or any sort of path towards a future in comedy, so I put the dream on the backburner, and threw myself into martial arts instead. I was a short, fat kid with a terrible haircut so learning how to fight was absolutely vital in 1990’s Northern Ireland. I did quite well and represented Ireland for years, eventually fighting at the World Karate Championships. Then I got caught up in the cage-fighting buzz and moved into MMA.
Comedy is the thing that bonded my family the most. My two older brothers are blind, so we had to find things that didn’t rely on visuals to enjoy. We loved standup records (I am not in fact a million years old; but pre-internet audio was easier and much cheaper to get a hold of than videos). Re-runs of things like ITV’s An Audience With… brought greats like Billy Connolly, Victoria Wood and Joan Rivers into the house. If they were doing any sight-gags, I’d commentate and try to get Thomas and Brendan to laugh. My mother fanned the flame by getting me comedy books every Christmas, until I became obsessed with how comedy works the same way musicians are with songs.
Eventually I got tired of getting beat up by people much better than me, and moved to London. I did my first open mic comedy night and knew straight away it was what I was meant to be doing the whole time...and here we are!
