I was in an audience of two for a Michael McIntyre show in 2003 – Edinburgh Festival fairy tales can still happen

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. For newer comedians who perform night after night in the hope of having a break-out hit – or at least not entering the winter in abject penury – the month can feel like something akin to a hand-cranked rollercoaster, while those who’ve already made their names compete to draw in the industry faces who might be able to give them the work that’ll see them through the rest of the year. One minute you’ll be having a coffee and tending one another’s review scars, and the next you’re making a panicky dash across town to record an obscure podcast on the off-chance that one of its 53 listeners might be sufficiently charmed by your frayed ramblings to come to your show. But it’s also where you discover whether you belong – whether you are, in fact, a comic – because as desperately as you may wish for the earth to pull you into a cold, damp pit where nobody will ever see you again, it is nothing next to your desperation to get back up on that stage. I’ve already toured it but, given that it’s a show loosely themed around my twenty years on the circuit, I can’t resist taking it to its spiritual home.