Dad Jokes: Being Creative With Young Kids

“I love being a dad. But I also love crème eggs. And, as much as I love crème eggs, I don’t want to eat crème eggs for 18 hours a day. And then be woken up 20 minutes after I’ve fallen asleep to eat crème eggs.”

I swore I wouldn’t let fatherhood curtail my burgeoning stand up comedy career. And to the shock of no one with children, it completely did. Two and a bit years ago my first daughter was born and less then a year ago my last final daughter was born. I’ve been able to maintain a trickle of gigs throughout but nowhere near the amount needed to make any sort of progression. Which is fine. I’ve thought long and hard about it and on balance I’d rather have my two incredible daughters than be gigging with two suspected [REDACTED] in the [REDACTED] Comedy Club in [REDACTED] for fifty quid on a Saturday night.

Nevertheless being unable to gig consistently has been incredibly frustrating. At the beginning of this year I decided I wasn’t going to pit parenting against being a stand up comedian anymore and instead I would write and perform an hour long show about being a dad. I hastily booked a 40 seat venue and announced it. I called it Dead Beat in honour of my parenting style and my crippling exhaustion. Quotes from it are scattered throughout.

“That’s the problem with baby-led parenting, as little as you think you know about parenting, you know a lot more than a stupid little baby.”

The problem with agreeing to do anything in the future when you have young kids is you can never predict what state of decay your life will be in by the time that obligation comes about. Opening a show in Derby next week might seem entirely plausible until the day comes, your partner and children are ill and you haven’t slept in days. Suddenly a 90 minute drive is not quite such a doddle. Or, I dunno, say you’ve agreed to write something about parenting and being creative and every night since you agreed to do it your youngest daughter has screamed for at least four hours? Something like that maybe.

“I sleep like a baby. By that I mean I wake up screaming every half an hour like one of those tortured lab monkeys.”

Inevitably you will end up letting someone down and when I let comedy promoters down I like it to be on stage rather than cancelling at the last minute. Making something on my own was liberating in that regard, knowing I’d be the only one disappointed if something went wrong or I failed to deliver.

The show did give me focus for the first few months of the year and something to make me feel like I was being productive and getting somewhere again. I diligently got up early and wrote and edited and re-edited every single morning; the rhythmic sounds of my children screaming mixing with the birdsong.

And I did it, somehow. I did manage to write and structure a decent hour. It was f**king difficult though. It was a daily, hourly, minutely grind to get words out. For anyone without young kids (firstly, go and do something, ANYTHING else rather than read this – go and LIVE whilst you still can) let me explain – it’s hard getting from one end of the day to another, before you even begin to start trying to achieve anything. I had to make the most of any opportunity had to be seized; scribbling notes whilst holding overfull nappies and practicing my lines pushing a buggy. 

If you want to do anything more ambitious than slumping in front of whatever dating show hasn’t yet had a Channel 4 expose of an evening, you will end up sacrificing all other non-parenting activities. There’s an eight-week-old rhino at Whispnade zoo that I’ve seen more than any of my friends in the last three years. It’s horrible battle of wills with your own flaccid motivation and the constant niggling question of “why is this not enough for you?’

“We never used to argue before we had kids. Now we do it all the time. I don’t think it’s bad, necessarily, it’s just one of the few things we can still do in the evening as a couple.”

Anyway, I managed to write a show I was fairly happy with. And when the time came I performed it competently. It went well, I was happy with it. “Wears his genius lightly” and “a special and unique talent” the audience thought, probably. I have somehow made a few friends in stand up comedy (I’m an unsettling presence on and off stage) who helped and it felt like I’d achieved something tangible.

“I’m so tired. At night I can feel my brain trickling out of my ear like swimming pool water.”

I’ve since edited it the recording of it into a five minute video, through camera-fiasco necessity. But it works well, thinking about it, as any parents will only have a tiny amount of time in which to watch anything and anyone who’s not a parent – rightfully – won’t give a shit.

I want my daughters to know they don’t have to settle for a mundane life of economic necessity; self-expression is important and life is too short to not do what makes you happy. Even if you’re too numb from tiredness to feel emotions. I say life is too short but we had one Saturday with them during the heatwave which lasted about as long as the Ming dynasty.  

“I love being a dad. I love being a dad nearly as much as I loved my old life.”

It’s a bloody-minded battle trying to juggle parenting, a day job, sleep, health, art and everything else. It can be lonely, frustrating and unrewarding a lot of the time. But the only other option is giving up, which is far worse. Anyway, I have to finish this now as one of them has just woken up and started screaming.

“In spite of everything I’ve said tonight I do like my kids… Love ‘em even. And even though they’ve cost me my mind, It’s all been worth it. Provided they turn out great. If they turn out awful after all this I’ll be livid. What a waste of time.”

Watch Tom’s stand up HERE and check out @tomratcliffehanger on socials to follow his journey through comedy and parenting.