For three years and four months, Paul Foot has been living in a state of joy. He is in it now, he says, sitting across a table, overlooking London\u2019s Regent\u2019s canal. He\u2019s wearing one of his trademark blue LF Markey boilersuits, and seems serene rather than ecstatic, half smiling. But that\u2019s because the joy doesn\u2019t spike or yo-yo. It\u2019s a \u201cconstant\u201d, so reliable that even when someone he knows dies, \u201cthere\u2019s still a peace beneath it and a joy in it as well\u201d.<\/p>\n
Life was not always like this, and the story of how Foot, 51, overturned 28 years of \u201ccrushing, all-encompassing depression and anxiety\u201d is told in his critically acclaimed 2023 show Dissolve<\/a>, the filmed special of which is released this week.<\/p>\n \u201cI was never bipolar. I never had any highs, it was just massive lows,\u201d he says. \u201cTo be technically accurate, I had severe anxiety that led to depression.\u201d He felt he was locked inside a glass box. \u201cToo depressed to go out, lying around in bed.\u201d<\/p>\n Foot\u2019s life took a hairpin turn in about three seconds of violent enlightenment one Sunday afternoon while he was driving in the suburbs of south Manchester. He\u2019d stayed overnight, then stopped to see friends after performing his show Swan Power<\/a> in Carlisle. It was 4.59pm on 20 March 2022 \u2013 the occasion so momentous it\u2019s time-stamped in his memory \u2013 when, as he puts it, \u201cmy consciousness exploded\u201d.<\/p>\n To other motorists, the magical rearrangement of brain chemistry \u2013 what Foot calls \u201cthe event\u201d \u2013 going on behind the wheel of the Nissan Micra was invisible. \u201cThe car didn\u2019t swerve. There was no pulling over. I didn\u2019t see bright lights. I just carried on driving,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a moment that was both extraordinary and ordinary\u201d \u2013 like stirring from a dream. \u201cIt was just, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ve woken up \u2026\u2019 And it didn\u2019t matter that I\u2019d spent 28 years in a state of depression. It was gone. Everything was different. Immediately, I thought: \u2018I\u2019m not an irritable, angry person. That is not my true nature. That is just how I was. I\u2019ve forgiven everything that anyone has ever done to me or will ever do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n If that sounds like a lot of forgiving, that\u2019s because when he was 11, Foot was sexually assaulted. He slips this revelation into the middle of a hilarious skit in Dissolve about a fictitious dinner with former Labour MP Chuka Umunna, which is typical of how he pulls the rug from under his audience. But for decades, Foot suppressed the memory of this assault so effectively he had no awareness of it at all, and lived in denial of his depression.<\/p>\n Foot won the BBC New Comedy award in 1997 before experiencing \u201813 tricky, difficult years\u2019. Photograph: Mark Waugh\/Alamy<\/p>\n \u201cI had friends who said, \u2018You ought to go and see someone who can help you.\u2019\u201d It was his friend Ruby Wax<\/a> who put him in touch with a psychopharmacologist. \u201cI remember thinking, \u2018Please, please don\u2019t tell me to do meditation! Because I just knew I needed medication. I needed something to change what was in there,\u201d he says, stabbing a finger at his head. He came away with a prescription. \u201cI was like, thank God. Thank God.\u201d<\/p>\n This was 2017. Foot was 43. The lows evened out. He felt more stable. \u201cI thought, \u2018Oh, this is good. Hurrah! This is the end!\u2019 But it wasn\u2019t the end because then, within that stability, I started to say,\u201d and here his voice becomes very quiet, \u201c\u2018Oh, crikey. I\u2019m remembering what happened to me.\u2019 And those things were verified by other methods. Contemporaneous things. So then I realised. OK. So that\u2019s why I became depressed.\u201d<\/p>\n For all those years, he had no awareness of the assault he had experienced? \u201cI think that\u2019s quite common, having spoken to therapists,\u201d he says. \u201cSomething happens to you when you\u2019re a child and it doesn\u2019t really register. You go through adolescence, and you don\u2019t remember it. Then, at about 19, a massive depression kicks in. This huge depression in the sense of absolute unease.\u201d<\/p>\n Therapy helped him to \u201cattempt to forgive what had happened to me\u201d, he says. His voice turns warbly. \u201cWell, Paul, you must forgive yourself as well, blah, blah, blah.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTherapy got me to a point where I had moved forward from where I was. But in a way, I was still struggling with the forgiveness,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d more or less forgiven. I\u2019d, like, 99% forgiven. But you can\u2019t 99% forgive. You\u2019ve either forgiven or you haven\u2019t.\u201d Foot studied maths at university, which may partly explain the binary approach to a complex emotional and cognitive process.<\/p>\n In any case, \u201cthat little 1% of non-forgiveness\u201d lodged in him, a burning \u201c1% of resentment\u201d, as deeply embedded and lurkingly painful as a fragment of shrapnel.<\/p>\n Still, he was better than he had been, and after a few years he stopped the medication. His friends worried. \u201cThey said, \u2018You\u2019re going back to the same old Paul.\u2019 Ruby Wax said, \u2018You can see it in the eyes.\u2019 My eyes were becoming sort of dead.\u201d<\/p>\n His predicament came to a head the night before \u201cthe event\u201d. He had made a mistake during his performance of Swan Power in Carlisle \u2013 \u201cso minor\u201d that no one appeared to notice. But up started the voice. \u201c\u2018You stupid idiot, Paul. Why did you make a mistake? You can\u2019t get it right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Alone in his hotel room, he \u201cwas subjected to the full force of my own \u2026 agony of myself. My own brain was torturing me. My inner voice was saying, \u2018You\u2019re useless, Paul. You\u2019re hopeless.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He met friends and had \u201cquite philosophical conversations\u201d, in which Foot argued for the existence of the soul \u2013 \u201cThere must be a soul, because if we\u2019re just all collections of cells and chemical impulses, then what does love mean? What does sadness mean?\u201d \u2013 and recounted his three near-near-death experiences (he doesn\u2019t want to overclaim them), including six hours spent on the toilet with a very upset stomach.<\/p>\n Everything was swirling when he got in his car that Sunday afternoon. He had made a promise to a friend that \u201cif I ever became really, really low, I would go straight back on to the medication. No ifs or buts. No delay.\u201d But the medication was 350 miles away, at home in Buckinghamshire, and anyhow he really didn\u2019t want to go back on it. But he was running out of choices.<\/p>\n \u2018A lot of people go through their whole lives with no idea what they want to do.\u2019 Photograph: Alicia Canter\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cI had solemnly promised my friend that I would never do anything terrible to myself,\u201d he says. \u201cSo that had been ruled out.\u201d<\/p>\n This was something he had previously considered?<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I mean \u2026 \u201d He looks unsure whether to continue. \u201cWell, perhaps it\u2019s not such a bad thing to say that I had felt suicidal.\u201d<\/p>\n Essentially, and he says this as if he\u2019s eliminating variables in an algebraic equation, his depression dissolved because \u201cI\u2019d ruled out every single possibility except one: immediately to become better.\u201d<\/p>\n In more than three decades of standup, Foot has largely avoided personal revelation. \u201cWell, obviously, I\u2019m not going to do a show about that. Obviously, there\u2019s no comedy in talking about 28 years of depression, and how it all disappeared in an instant,\u201d he told his writing partner, Aaron Kilkenny-Fletcher. Besides, he didn\u2019t know if he would \u201cstill be funny\u201d after his big life change. He kept wondering, \u201cWas the creativity intrinsically linked to depression or angst?\u201d<\/p>\n But six weeks later, he and Kilkenny-Fletcher were in Bermuda on a writing trip and Foot\u2019s transformation infused all their conversations. They couldn\u2019t escape it. \u201cI was so different. It changed our whole dynamic.\u201d<\/p>\n For instance, when Kilkenny-Fletcher forgot their flight times and the phone reception was bad, \u201cI was very calm,\u201d Foot says. \u201cI said, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s all right\u2019 \u2026 This was so different to the old Paul.\u201d<\/p>\n Walking through a hilltop fort in Bermuda, a line came to him: \u201cIt\u2019s the end of suffering and it\u2019s right there.\u201d His hands move to hold an imaginary object while he replays this scene, because what he realised, on that hilltop, was that he wanted to offer his experience to others and offer it fully: the joy \u201cis for everyone\u201d.<\/p>\n Dissolve flips between very funny, silly and surreal sequences on how people deal with change, Tutankhamun\u2019s troubled rule, homophobia, and giving blood, and intensely serious passages of personal revelation that elicit no laughs but long, deep silence, heavier with attention and affirmation than any applause.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s wonderful,\u201d Foot says. Comedy<\/a> has changed hugely since he started out in the clubs in the late 90s, when \u201csilence was an enemy \u2026 Someone would be straight in and you\u2019d lose your authority on stage.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019d known he wanted to be a comedian the first time he performed, in Oxford, at 19 \u2013 he read maths at Merton College (in the year above Liz Truss<\/a>; they went to the same parties). His debut, mostly unscripted riffing on fruit, wasn\u2019t brilliant, but he didn\u2019t bomb either, and afterwards he told his friends, \u201cI\u2019m going to be a professional comedian.\u201d \u201cAnd they said, \u2018You\u2019ve just started a maths degree. Don\u2019t be silly.\u2019 But I knew immediately what I wanted to do. So that was nice. Because a lot of people go through their whole lives and have no idea what they want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n On stage in 2016. Photograph: Mark Waugh\/Alamy<\/p>\n Foot grew up in Buckinghamshire, with a younger brother \u2013 not a million miles from where he lives now, \u201cin a boring, forgettable place where nothing happens\u201d. His mother was a professional photographer (\u201c\u2018You\u2019re standing ever so stiff! Try to be more natural!\u201d), and his dad \u201cdid work as a credit controller briefly \u2026 but he wasn\u2019t someone who you\u2019d really say had a career.\u201d<\/p>\n I wonder if Foot was always the funny one in his family, but he says not. \u201cI was very quiet.\u201d At 17, 18, he started to be funny at school, a boys\u2019 grammar in High Wycombe. \u201cBut I was never funny before that.\u201d<\/p>\n Really? \u201cNo. Never at all funny,\u201d he says. He sounds rather flat. Maybe he was funny inside? \u201cI don\u2019t think so,\u201d he says. \u201cUntil the age of 17, there was nothing funny about me. I was ever so serious. Very quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n As a comedian, he was initially extraordinarily successful. \u201cA lot of things happened very quickly.\u201d There was a BBC New Comedy award in 1997; the Open Mic award at the Edinburgh festival. Caroline Aherne<\/a> praised his work.<\/p>\n But then followed \u201c13 tricky, difficult years. Playing really tough gigs where people weren\u2019t interested in what I was doing. It was terrible and they didn\u2019t want it.\u201d The other performers would say, \u201cYou really need to think about what you\u2019re doing, Paul.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking back, he may have turned professional too soon. It was hard to make ends meet; he built up debts. \u201cBut in the end, it turned around and I started to make money.\u201d<\/p>\n In many ways, the period in his 30s when he was repaying his debts \u201cwas one of the most carefree times of my life\u201d. It\u2019s not how many people regard debt. \u201cYes,\u201d Foot says. \u201cBecause I didn\u2019t have any spare money. So there wasn\u2019t any money to worry about. It was just a simple, straightforward life of living frugally.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Because I was so ill, I just carried on and on and on.\u2019 Photograph: Alicia Canter\/The Guardian<\/p>\n He built an audience, going from table to table after his shows. \u201cI wonder if you\u2019d be interested in joining my society, the Guild of Connoisseurs?\u201d he\u2019d ask. (Today, the guild \u2013 a fanclub, basically \u2013 flourishes.) \u201cThey\u2019d say, \u2018We were in hysterics! Where do we sign? Then at the next table they\u2019d say, \u2018Why would we want to join that? You\u2019re the least funny comedian we\u2019ve ever seen.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He was amazed one night when an audience member asked to buy the \u201cdisturbance\u201d he\u2019d used in his set \u2013 the comic prompt cards he holds up, with one of his sketches on the reverse. \u201cI said, \u2018No. It\u2019s a prop. I need it.\u2019 And he said, \u2018I\u2019ll give you all the money in my pocket\u2019,\u201d and handed over \u00a313.33. \u201cAnd I thought, \u201cThat\u2019s all right for a little picture.\u201d Now the disturbances sell for \u00a370 each.<\/p>\n Still, it must have been tough to persist through those lean years while spending periods bedridden with depression. \u201cI had to be very strong in a sort of way,\u201d he says. \u201cAaron has said that he doesn\u2019t think I would be a comedian now if it wasn\u2019t for the depression. Because someone who was not in that state would have stopped earlier. They would have said, \u2018This is going so badly for so long. For my own mental wellbeing, I need to not do this any more. I need to preserve my own sense of self.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But Foot didn\u2019t have that instinct for self-preservation. \u201cBecause I was so ill, I just carried on and on and on. I couldn\u2019t think of anything else to do.\u201d<\/p>\n We have been talking for nearly two hours. Is he still in a state of joy? \u201cYes,\u201d he says. \u201cI feel joy all the time.\u201d He knows now that he can \u201cjust be happy \u2026 just choose happiness\u201d. Even that little fragment of non-forgiveness has vanished. He is working on his next show, which may or may not be more personal than Dissolve. Recently, though, he listened to a recording of one of his very early performances, and obviously there were differences, obviously he has evolved, but he was struck, he says, by how \u201cthere\u2019s something, some core thing, that\u2019s unchanged. I somehow managed to stay exactly the same.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul Foot\u2019s standup special Dissolve<\/a> is released on 21 July.<\/p>\n In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org<\/a> or jo@samaritans.ie<\/a>. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org<\/a>, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org<\/a><\/p>\n In the UK, Rape Crisis<\/a> offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland<\/a>, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland<\/a>. In the US, ibiblio.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For three years and four months, Paul Foot has been living in a state of joy. 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