19: Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life
Jules muses pulled gigs, CMAT, difficult goodbyes, and sacking off competitions.
Next episode 20: Coming soon!
Transcript:
Episode 19: Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life
Jules O’Brian:Hello, I’m Jules O’Brian. Welcome to another episode of “Avoid Excessive Cleavage (and Other Advice to Ignore).” This is a podcast that firmly believes that no matter your age, your shape, your size, you should wear whatever you like, express yourself however you like.
Life’s too short to be letting other people bring you down even if it sometimes feels really hard to ignore them. This is not the podcast for you if you’re looking for something edgy, something out there, something controversial. This is more thoughtful, cosy and relatable
with an occasional side of bafflement at the state of things, thrown in for good measure, but it’s also the podcast that says no to unsolicited advice and inspirational quotes. So, this episode is brought to you by the overwhelming desire to lie on the floor and melt into
the carpet, I think. But instead of doing that, I’ve decided to—wait for this phrase because I’ve thought about this,—I’ve decided to, “turn the ache into art.” Oh, that’s quite a phrase, isn’t it? “Turn the ache into art.” It sounds noble, sounds poetic, it sounds a bit tortured, and a
little bit sexy, but what it actually means, the reality of it is, it means cry in the car, get compared to magnolia paint, and then record a podcast about it in your bra. Well, you try to work out if you should admit defeat, throw in the towel and rejoin the rat race,
God forbid. Okay, so I’m going to explain, I promise. So let’s start with a classic inspirational quote, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Right, well, okay, yeah, I do what I love. I am absolutely doing what I love. Stand up comedy, writing stuff, creating stuff,
performing stuff, and I’ve never worked harder for less money or with more existential dread. But sure, not technically work because I’m having a lovely time. A lot of it is spent in the car, sometimes sobbing into a Pret napkin while I drive to Lincolnshire or something, but I am having
the lovely time, I promise. This week, I was meant to be doing two gigs in Manchester. The fact that it’s two gigs is quite important because it was only by doing the two gigs I could make it financially viable. All the time, I got to remember that I came into comedy really late, so I am still at a point
where, you know, I’m having to work really hard just to scrape the cash together to make this stuff earn me a living. I mean, I don’t know that ever quite goes away, but hopefully people will understand what I’m talking about when I say that. Anyway, so I’m supposed to do these two gigs, and the second gig
messaged me the afternoon that I was about to travel to Manchester just to say, “Oh, really sorry, double booked you, get you on another the time.” [GROANS] I get it, mistakes happen, that’s fine. I really do understand. It’s just so frustrating because if that were to happen the other way around, I know people
would be really pissed off with me, and I have called out a couple of gigs recently, and that’s a lie, I called out one gig recently for a really good reason, and I still felt bad about it, you know, because you do feel like you’re letting people down. But if I don’t turn it to a gig, you know, if I pull
out of it, as long as I give somebody enough notice, I mean, it’s not being funny, I’m not being funny, but it’s not like Katherine Ryan not turning up or something, is it? You know, nobody’s really going to give that much of a shit. It’s inconvenient for the booker because they’ve got to sort it out
and replace me, but I’m not a big deal, you know. Whereas for me, if when it’s the other way around and somebody says to me, “Oh, actually, you can’t do this,” without any notice, it’s a little bit shit. But hey, d’you know what? And you don’t play your face about it because then you’re the difficult one,
you’re sort of being high maintenance ideas above your station, the woman who gets upset about admin, but anyway, it was what it was, you know, and I think what got me about it so much is what it represents because you spend so much time trying to create momentum and then it’s just pulled. So it’s that feeling of,
what’s the point? What am I, you know, what am I trying to do? Anyway, by the by, it’s all fine, it’s all good. Another thing that was a bit of a failure this week is that I was supposed to go for a colposcopy, now a colposcopy, if you’re not sure, is when they, it feels horrible,
well, no, actually it doesn’t feel horrible, it sounds horrible. When you’ve had some dodgy cervical tests, they have to take a little bit of it and do some tests on it, and the way that they have to do it is exactly as you would imagine, you know, it’s a very undignified process,
you lie there with your sort of bum shuffled to the end of a,—what are they called, those couches, they don’t want to call it a couch, that makes it sound so weird, you have to shuffled your bum to the end of the trolley,— is it a trolley? I don't know,—legs akimbo, somebody has a good old root around in there,
and yeah, they take a little bit of it away, the only, it doesn’t hurt as such, it’s uncomfortable, it feels a bit like, you know, if you’ve got a paper cut and you were to spill lemon juice on it, it feels a bit like that, so anyway, so I was supposed to go, well, I did, I went to my local hospital
to get this done this week, and the guy came out, the consultant, whoever he would have been, came out, called my name, but he got the surname slightly wrong, and that happens sometimes, that’s okay, my real surname is Brain, and he, called my name out as Julie Brown, okay, that happens,
it happens a lot because Brain is a slightly weird surname, so I got up, I went into the little room with him, just where you go for the initial sort of consultation, and they talked to you about, you know, what you’re here for, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So this guy starts talking to me,
and straight away, it’s quite clear that he’s not aware of the history and why, quite why I’m there, he’s talking about a similar procedure, but something different, so I say, “No, that’s not why I’m here.” So, he looks at his notes again, and says a different name again, what that he reads out from the notes.
In fact, the things that he read out to me from these notes that were in front of him, I’m sure, must be quite a breach of GDPR, because whoever this lady is that he was talking to me about was certainly not me, and I now know bits about her personal life that she probably won’t want me to know,
and he, instead of asking me questions, you know, “Who are you?, What’s your name, What’s your date of birth?” He was reading out this other person’s information, and then said, “Oh, hang on.” So, he disappeared from the room for a minute, came back and then he asked me my date of birth, my correct name, blah blah blah.
He got the wrong notes, he got everything wrong, and sent me back out into the waiting area, which was fine, you know, again, these things happen, I know people make mistakes, I get it, nobody’s perfect, but this kind of felt a little bit uncomfortable because of why I was there,
you know, nobody wants to be feeling like, “Oh, you got the wrong person, you got the wrong fanny” in this situation. So, I went back out into the waiting area and sat there for a little while, and I sat there for a little while longer, but I sat there for longer still until I went over
to the Reception area and said, you know, “What’s going on because my appointment was due at whatever time it was, and I’ve seen this guy, and he got my name wrong,” and I’m feeling a little bit discombobulated, you know, I didn’t say that, but that’s just what popped into my head just now.
It’d be weird if I said that to a medical receptionist, but you get what I’m saying. And it was a lot of confusion, nobody seemed to know what was going on, and I very politely said, “You know what, I think I’m going to go, if you could possibly send me another appointment, that would
be great.” So I left, and I hope I’ve done the right thing, I didn’t throw my toys out of the pram, I was very polite about the whole thing, but I felt so uncomfortable, it just felt too important to be kind of going, oh hey, you know, these things happen, it’s not like I’d ordered a,
I don’t know, a cheeseburger and ended up with a chicken sandwich, you know, that’s, that’s like a sort of, yeah, I better know, whatever, but this is a bad analogy, but I think you get my point, I hope so anyway, it just felt like it mattered too much, especially when you’re about to literally open yourself up
in the most exposing way possible, and you feel like somebody’s getting it wrong, they don’t know who you are. So, anyway, yeah, I left, and I’m going to have to go back again, but it’s really sort of put me off, it feels like there are a lot of mistakes happening with those kinds of things, and I’m a little
bit scared now about it, you know, but hey, I’ll go back, I’ll get it sorted, I will make sure that they know I’m the right person, and I will scoot down on that couch and have my bits and pieces inspected to within an inch of their lives. So, so yeah, that was a little interesting adventure
this week, that was not fun, anyway, I’m going to talk about something better, so it’s completely different, and something that has given me joy recently, I have discovered a performer, a singer called CMAT, she has just absolutely given me tingles, you know, I think she’s so amazing,
she’s Irish, her real name is Kira or Ciara, and she’s got stuff to say, she’s got really important stuff to say, the reason that I discovered her, probably the same reason is a lot of other people, you might not even know it, but you know that funny little dance that’s on TikTok, not that I saw
it on TikTok because I see everything, you know, three or four weeks later on Instagram, or wherever, because I don’t spend a great deal of time on TikTok because I’m too old for it, is that weird little dance everybody’s doing to, so the second verse of her song Take a Sexy Picture of Me, and
goes, “I did the butcher, I did the baker,/I did the home and the family maker,/I did schoolgirl fantasies,” and there’s a whole little dance to it, but all kinds of people have been doing, and when I first heard it, I thought, “Oh, that’s a bit weird, schoolgirl fantasy,” and I didn’t know much about it, and I just
assumed it was sexualising younger people, and stuff. Anyway, I’ve since listened to the song properly, and loads of her other stuff, and oh my God, she’s phenomenal, it’s like she’s got inside my head, and she understands how to articulate all the stuff, I want to say about ageing and feeling
unworthy, and she’s amazing, she’s actually 29. How is she doing that at 29? You know, I could literally be her mum, and I’m sort of, you know, bowing down to her brilliance. So yeah, absolutely phenomenal. She’s done the whole festival circuit over the summer, and I’m gutted not to have seen her,
even more gutted when I found out the other week that when I performed at Bearded Theory Festival, she was there too, and I hadn’t discovered her at that point, it was probably one week or two weeks away from me finding out about this formidable brilliant Irish woman, and I didn’t know she was there,
I was so gutted, because I’ve been trying to find places that she’s gigging, she’s on tour, and every gig that I could get to her, I’m gigging the same night, that tends to happen a lot when you are somebody that works in this kind of industry, you see somebody that you want to go and see,
and you can’t, because you’re busy that same night doing similar kinds of things. I’m so annoyed that I didn’t know who she was, and that she was performing while I was there, I felt like such an absolute tit for that, but what can you do? Anyway, I would highly recommend her, she is wonderful.
I adore her, she’s got things to say, and her music is just fabulous in its own right, I love CMAT. And it’s quite rare for me to fall in love with someone new musically, usually I’m all into my Country, or 90s Brit pop, and that’s it. The last time I felt like this was when I discovered
Lainey Wilson a few years ago, again, Country; I was at Country to Country Festival in London, and I only knew one of her songs, and she came on stage, and just hypnotised me, I couldn’t believe the brilliance of her performance, clearly the hard work. Oh my God, she just blew me away, when I discover somebody
knew like that, I do get a little bit obsessed, but yeah, for me at the moment CMAT is all the things. Something else that’s happened recently, that’s sort of hit me for six, something much harder, is that I have to say goodbye to my dog, Alfie. He had kidney failure, and I didn’t realise how quickly
that could take them. One day he was just a bit off, he just didn’t seem quite himself, and then within a week he’d gone. And I feel really stupid for not knowing that that was probably going to be how it would go, because I thought we’d just been monitoring him, and tweaking his
diet and giving him drugs for, I don’t know what, another couple of years, in my head, I mean he was 10 or 11 years old, we weren’t 100% sure how old he was because he was a rescue, that was always my excuse for everything that he ever did wrong, “Oh he’s a rescue.” And he was a massive dickhead,
he was my massive dickhead, and he was with me all the time, you know, constantly, under my feet, and not subtly either, because he was the size of a horse, he was like a cross between a pointer and a mastiff, and almost a bit of bulldog in there, so I don’t know, he was a bit of everything,
but he was, he was mine. He’d even, he’d follow me from one end of the kitchen to the other, not because he was needy, I don’t think, well maybe it was a bit because he was needy, but I think it was mostly because he was hoping I’d drop a bit of cheese, you know, or a bit of bread, or something, he was
food mad. I’ve never known anything like it, absolutely food crazy. So when in his final 48 hours he couldn’t bear to eat, or he’d start eating and then have to run outside to wee, I knew that was when things were really bad. So, yeah, so he’s gone, and that’s, that’s kind of
heart-breaking, and it’s been really difficult to deal with, but that first vet’s appointment though, when he was first, the one that was clearly something a little bit wrong, but I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t know, I just didn’t know how serious it was. So the vet obviously had to examine
all his different bits and pieces, part of which involved her having, oh God, I wouldn’t envy anyone this task, having to put, you know, her rubber gloves on and have a root around in his bum. Poor vet, so to keep him occupied, I stayed at his head end feeding him biscuits, which he just loved,
and the vet was at the other end doing what she got to do, so she got her finger in the most disgusting place, and she was saying to him, “Oh, aren’t you a naughty boy, you’re very chubby,” as he was munching biscuits, delighted with himself, and that cost me £222.
I stood paying for that afterwards, thinking, “Bloody hell, how has that just cost £222?” But I thought, no, okay, let’s reframe that: there are Tory MPs who pay a lot more than that for the same treatment, aren’t there? So yeah, so it’s been a little bit difficult to deal with that, and I know there are
a lot of people going through a lot worse things, and I know that there are going to be people who will have that feeling of, oh, you know, it’s just a dog, and it’s difficult to talk to people about in any sort of detail that if they haven’t ever had that experience. But yeah, I’m struggling
a little bit with it, it’s hard not having him around, it’s hard not having him there when I come in at night from a gig, and one of the little things that we would do is that I, he got a white head, he got a brown and white head, but in between his eyebrows on the very top of his head was white,
and I always wearing glossy lipstick when I’m performing, you know. And I would come in at night, and he’d come out of the lounge where he slept the front door, and he’d stretch and yawn, because he’s pleased to see me, and he’s tail would be wagging, and I’d take his, his great big head in my hands,
and kiss him on that white patch between his eyes, so we’d have a big red blob of, of lipstick, in between his eyes, and he didn’t know, obviously, but I loved that, and it used to make me laugh at his expense. Yeah, it’s a funny old, funny old thing with him. I went away last weekend with my friend,
and we stopped off at the motorway services at one point, and when we came out, there was this guy, this real, like, you know, muscle-bound guy with a, this massive dog that really reminds of me of Alfie, and this dog, we might even be Alfie, because of its sort of frame, its size, its markings,
stupid big head, this dog looked at me, I could tell the guy wanted people to be scared of his dog, right? You know the story, you know what I mean, and I just saw this dog, and it really reminded me of Alfie, so I went straight over, like an idiot, this is how I’m going to die one day,
isn’t it? Probably, but I went straight over this dog, this huge dog is jumping up at me, and it got claws like Alfie’s as well, because Alfie always hated them being cut, so he used to tap dance up and down the laminate flooring. Well, I say tap dance, sort of sounded like, I don’t know, some sort
of 20 stone weightlifter wearing tap shoes, you know, but yeah, this dog was jumping up at me, and trying to kind of hug me, I guess, but because his claws were so long, they were sort of scratching my arms and left all these big red scratch marks down my arms and hands, but I really liked
it, I know that sounds weird, because it reminded me so much of Alf, and yeah, I saw what I’m going to this dog, “Oh, aren’t you gorgeous? Look at you. Look at you. You great big baby. Oh, you’re beautiful. Who’s a beautiful boy then?” And this guy, this kind of muscle-bound guy, didn’t really know how to
deal with that, because he was just used to people being frightened of his dog, clearly, and there’s this slightly mad woman holding back tears enjoying the whole thing. “Oh, he’s a beautiful boy, he’s a beautiful boy” Now, I looked at this guy, and I said, “Oh, he’s so gorgeous, what breed is he?”
And he said, “He’s, he’s an American Bulldog.” I’m like, “Oh, who’s a beautiful baby, who’s a beautiful baby.” And clearly the dog wasn’t used to people approaching him like that. But he was loving it, he was absolutely loving it. But yeah, maybe, you know, don’t do as I do, kind of thing. But that just made me happy, a couple of minutes,
even though the poor guy that was trying to be all hard and whatever, wasn’t sure what to do himself. But it is weird, isn’t it, when you go through stuff like that, I think any sort of loss, any sort of trauma,—is that too strong a word?—in life, just put your into a bit of a
weird headspace, because I’m finding that I can’t, I’m struggling anyway to enjoy things that I would normally love; so for example, I’ve talked before about horror movies, I’m a huge horror movie freak, absolutely love a good horror, even if it’s, you know, sort of a blockbuster kind of accepted
by the industry, this is the New Big Thing, or if it’s a shitty little thing that’s just been put on Amazon Prime as a bit of a space filler, you know, that looks like it was made on a budget of £50. I think if horror is good, it’s good regardless of the budget, yeah, so I tried to watch “Sinners.”
Right now, I haven’t seen a bad thing about it, everybody is raving about this movie, everybody is saying that it’s fantastic, it looks amazing on screen, which it does. But you know what, I got 40 minutes in, I got bored, that’s terrible, isn’t it?
It just makes me feel like, you know, what’s wrong with me, because everybody else can see this movie as being this work of art, and I know it clearly is, and I know it’s only because I’m in a weird headspace at the moment, and I kind of don’t know how to engage with things that I would normally be engaging
with, because there’s something else at the forefront of my mind, I think. I think. Because this film is objectively a good film, better than good, but my brain just wouldn’t sit still. So, um, yeah, I don’t know, I’m going to go back to it, definitely. I wish I could have enjoyed it first time, man, but I will try again.
The same with books. My Audible is normally full of delightful, guilty pleasures, anyway, at the very least, so sort of thrillers, I do love a thriller, I love things like the Serial Killer Support Group, you know, or How to Kill your Family, all of that stuff. Most recent, oh my God, the one I’ve
just finished reading, so I’m just about to contradict myself now, because I’m saying, oh, I just can’t enjoy things, but I just really enjoyed, Don’t Let Him In, by Lisa Jewell. So good, oh my God, so good. I’ve read loads and loads of books I’ve enjoyed in the past, especially lots by Lisa Jewell,
Freda McFadden, K. L. Slater,… but rarely, if ever, have I wanted to climb inside a book, put my hands around the throat of the main character, and throttle them, like this, so what a read, seriously, yeah, Don’t Let Him In, so good. Just lots of moments where you’re gasping out
loud, the things that are happening, loved it, absolutely loved it. But yeah, lots of other books at the moment that I’m trying to listen to, and I just can’t get into them, and I’m having to sort of take a break from that sort of entertainment for myself, because clearly there’s something going
on in my head that’s not allowing me to engage properly, but hopefully all of that will come back, it will, it definitely will, but yeah, Don’t Let Him In, fucking amazing. Okay, recently, something that I didn’t do, which I think bears a mention. So I’d submitted a one minute video
for a comedy competition, and this is going to be one of those, if you know, you know, things. Let’s just say that it was a comedy competition attached to a vodka brand, and I got through to the next round, I suspect everyone got through to the next round, and I was off to slot a million miles
away from home, of course I was, and I was going to go, obviously it was an unpaid thing, it was competition, because it’s that thing always in the back of your mind going, oh, what if this is the big break, what if this is it, it was going to be two minutes of stage time, but first of all,
I saw some of the brilliant acts that they were spotlighting on their Instagram page, who were brilliant, so a young alternative, loud, slightly eccentric, and they were great, but it’s very, very far from who I am, what I do, and then I have this moment of peace when I realised that, oh,
it’s an audience vote, people can take their friends, because I wasn’t going to be able to take a whole host of people with me, and even if I had been able to, I wouldn’t have, but I thought, fuck it, I’m not doing that, I’m just not going to do it, and it felt really good to sort of withdraw myself from
the situation, and just go, yeah, I think I’ll give that one a miss, so that felt like a little moment of having some control and going, yeah, okay, a few weeks ago though, on that, on me not being somebody who’s out there and different and raucous, a very, very lovely comedy promoter said to me
after a gig, and this is the gorgeous thing to say to somebody, she said, “I can put you in front of any audience because you’re safe and gentle,” and I know that that’s a compliment, I know that that was meant in a really lovely way, but I’ve thought about it so much since then,
and all I can hear is, “Oh, you’re so beige, you’re so beige in a world of neon.” How lovely to have the magnolia, the mushroom white, oh, but no, it’s fine, it was a lovely thing to have said to me, but it does feel a little bit like, yeah, I think that might be the problem, I don’t know if maybe
that’s why things aren’t going as phenomenally as I’d like. Anyway, that’s another podcast recorded, isn’t it? I didn’t think I’d be able to do this, I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, and I know I’ve waffled on. You know what’s been lovely is that I’ve had people recently say to me,
“Oh, by the way, I listened to your podcast,” oh, that’s nice, you know, people that I wasn’t expecting to have, that actually my reaction has been, “What did you do that for?” So that’s quite sweet, so thank you if you listened, because you know, I suppose I’m making something,
that counts for something. It’s been really quite cathartic actually, so thank you for listening, if you have, do you know what, go and listen to CMAT, go and hug your dog, if you've got one, go and hug any dog, although maybe don’t choose an American bulldog like I did. Go and choose something a bit safer,
and if anyone ever calls you safe and gentle, do you know what, take the compliment, what’s that thing I’ve heard before, “Even dynamite has a quiet moment before it explodes,” maybe that’s what I am, who knows, anyway, do you know what, thank you so much for listening, I’ve been Jules O’Brian
with the Avoid Excessive Cleavage (and Other Advice to Ignore) podcast, hope to see you again, and until then just remember to ignore the unsolicited advice and daft inspirational quotes, I hope life treats you well.