I was in Balham last week, at The Bedford — a place I’ve known for years.
I used to live nearby, and spent a stretch playing gigs there. The round room is a uniquely special space — it seems to hold onto its past life, and something of that time in mine.
This time it wasn’t for music, but for comedy.
Dave Vickers, the promoter of Banana Cabaret — a long-running night that helped launch a number of now well-known comedians — is retiring. As a kind of farewell, many of those early acts have been returning to play small sets again. I managed to get tickets for the evening Harry Hill was appearing at, and went along with the family.
We were seated right by the steps the comedians come down before stepping onto the stage. Because my son is still young, every act noticed him on their way past — a thread of audience interaction that carried through the night.
When Harry Hill came on, he arrived in a kind of familiar chaos: an old trunk tucked under one arm, his other hand somehow lodged inside a VHS recorder. The oversized collar, the glasses — all of it instantly recognisable. Within seconds, I was laughing in the same way I remember from years ago — “Scroll, vape! Scroll, vape! Scroll, vape!” was his opening line, acknowledging our teenager. This high-energy, surreal distilling of our domestic challenges was enough to set me off into a kind of helpless, unguarded laughter that arrives before you’ve had time to decide whether something is funny or not.
I first saw him in the early nineties, at the Comedy Store, and later at the East Dulwich Tavern. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as much as I did then. There’s something about what he does that bypasses thought entirely. It just lands.
It was a genuinely lovely evening. The room was warm, the acts were all strong, and there was a shared sense of something being marked — a long thread of work and time quietly coming to a close.
And yet, sitting there, I was aware of something else alongside it.
The day before, my mum had told me some worrying news.
Nothing about that had changed. It was still there beneath the surface — not resolved, not understood, not going anywhere. And yet, for long stretches of that evening, I found myself laughing without hesitation. For a while, the weight of things seemed to loosen its hold.
A day or two later, I found myself looking up a few clips of Harry Hill online, partly to stay a little longer in that feeling. There’s something about encountering a performer again, years later, that makes me want to understand what it is they’re doing, or how it’s held together.
He’s been appearing on a number of podcasts recently. I came across a conversation with Jamie Laing, and there was a short exchange that stayed with me.
Jamie asked him what he liked most about himself.
Harry Hill paused, then said something quite simple. That he liked the fact that he was upbeat. That his mum had been the same, even through periods of real tragedy in her life. “I bounce back,” he said. “I have a sunny outlook.”
Jamie agreed that he also had this — adding that it was a good way to be.
And then Harry said something else, almost in passing.
“That’s the thing,” he said. “You can’t control it.”
They both seemed to agree on that point. As though this quality wasn’t something they had constructed or arrived at through effort. It was simply… there.
It struck me because it doesn’t quite line up with how we usually talk about these things.
We often speak about outlook as something we shape. Something we cultivate. A way of responding to life that reflects resilience, or perspective, or discipline over time.
But that isn’t quite what he was describing.
It sounded more like temperament. Like inheritance. Something given, rather than built.
I’ve been turning that over.
Whether this quality — this lightness — really is something fixed. A kind of baseline we either inherit or we don’t.
It certainly looks that way sometimes. We all know people who seem naturally inclined toward it. Quick to laugh. Able to recover. Not untouched by difficulty, but less defined by it.
And others — perhaps most of us, at different times — who feel things more heavily. For whom the same circumstances settle differently, or linger longer.
It’s tempting to draw a line there. To say: this is simply how people are.
But while thinking about creativity, and what to write this month, I felt this warranted further exploration.
Not whether we can become the kind of person who is always light.
But whether there are ways — intentional or otherwise — in which lightness is allowed to enter.
I’m reminded again of the Leonard Cohen line:
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
It lands differently here. Not necessarily a statement about beauty, or resilience, but as something closer to recognition.
That there are moments — often unplanned — where something shifts just enough to let light through. Not because we’ve resolved anything, or understood it better, but because, for a time, we’re no longer entirely closed around it.
I have a sense that the habit of creativity lives somewhere close to that same opening.
A way of remaining in contact with experience.
It doesn’t always feel like a choice.
Some days, sitting down to write, everything feels contracted. The mind circles. Attention narrows. There’s a sense of trying to force something into being — to arrive somewhere clearer, more resolved.
And then, with nothing external having changed, something shifts.
The same concerns are still present. The same uncertainties. But the relationship to them alters, almost imperceptibly.
This reminds me of harmony in music.
The same harmony can feel dense or spacious, tense or luminous, depending on how it’s held. A chord voiced tightly in the middle of the piano can feel closed, even claustrophobic. The same notes, spread out, allowed more air, can feel open — almost weightless.
Nothing has changed, and everything has changed.
I wonder if something similar is happening in us.
Not that the underlying conditions of life become easier, or more resolved. But that, from time to time, the way they are held shifts. Just enough to allow a different quality to enter — a lightness, or a warmth, or even just a brief sense of ease.
Not permanent.
Not fully controllable.
But real.
I’m not sure what to do with that, exactly.
Whether it points to something we can shape, or something we simply encounter from time to time. Whether it belongs to temperament, or circumstance, or some quieter interaction between the two.
But I’ve found myself noticing it more.
The way a room can shift.
The way laughter can arrive without warning.
The way, even in the presence of things that don’t feel light at all, something in us can still respond differently — if only for a moment. Perhaps clearer because of the contrast.
No solution.
No change in circumstance.
Just a shift in how things are held.
Perhaps that’s enough.
Not to become the kind of person who is always light, or to deny the weight of what we’re living through, but simply to recognise those moments when something opens — when the grip loosens slightly, and a different quality is allowed in.
They don’t last.
But they’re real.
And perhaps, in their own quiet way, they’re part of what keeps us in relationship — with each other, with our work, with whatever is still unfolding.
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