Esyllt Sears

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Friday 18th March 2022

Time to bask in the comfort of happier times, and the recollections of Esyllt Sears, a stand-up hewn from the rugged coastal splendour of Aberystwyth, who's doing interesting stuff across the UK over the coming months.

First up, Manchester, for A Lovely Time with Amy Gledhill and Friends. This month those friends are also the spoken-wordsmith supreme, Rob Auton, and hotly-tipped local Tony Wright. That's at the Chapeltown Picture House on Saturday April 2nd - so what can Esyllt newcomers expect?

"If you're thinking of coming along to A Lovely Time," says Sears, "and your genre of comedy is a woman from west Wales who bangs on about bath etiquette, escalators, marmalade and inappropriate duck managers, then I am yours!"

Sold! Also next month, Esyllt is set to record a new BBC show, The Rest Of Us, with stand-up colleagues from Scotland and Northern Ireland, in, er, Birmingham. She'll be previewing her new show Absolutely Not back in west Wales, at the marvellous Machynlleth Comedy Festival (with a debut Edinburgh run on the horizon). And look out for her podcast, The Xennial Dome, which is pleasingly age-specific.

A catalogue of stuff from Sears. But now - Wolves!

First gig: when, where, what?

2017. Wolverhampton. Funny Women competition heat.

2017 because I'd just had my second child and I think I was having some sort of identity crisis. Wolverhampton because I don't know anyone in Wolverhampton. And the Funny Women competition because I figured it would be a safe, supportive environment, and I was right.

I was named one to watch after that gig and, quite frankly, I peaked too soon. What followed was six months of mediocre and disastrous performances.

Favourite show, ever?

My absolute favourite gig to date was a filmed affair in my hometown during the 2021 Aberystwyth Comedy Festival. There is nothing like being able to make niche jokes about the local sexual health clinic in front of a home crowd.

Worst gig?

In 2019, I supported Elis James on tour and the first gig of that run was hideous. I hadn't factored in that no-one would be there to see me. I was nervous and overwhelmed. The guy who ran the venue, apropos of nothing, came up to me after the show and said of the audience, "they were quiet because they were listening". Ouch. Luckily, I found my groove as the tour went on and I look back at it all as a massive, invaluable, learning curve.

Which one person influenced your comedy life most significantly?

My parents had a big influence in terms of introducing me to sitcoms and comics in the '80s and '90s (both in Welsh and English) but the main influence was my best friend at school, Hannah.

We discovered Harry Hill and Alan Partridge and Absolutely Fabulous and Phoenix Nights together. We laughed our way through high school, finding the most mundane and random things funny, to the bafflement of everyone around us. Making her laugh was always a treat and attempting this is how I once got my car stuck on a traffic island.

And who's the most disagreeable person you've come across in the business?

In the main, I have found the comedy industry to be full of lovely, encouraging people. But inevitably, for every hundred wonderful, supportive people in the business, there will be one bastard. Luckily, a benefit of getting into comedy later in life is you can be more confident in the knowledge that you don't have to spend time with these people.

Is there one routine/gag you loved, that audiences inexplicably didn't?

I used to do a bit about the parish newsletter and the annual village duck race. It resonated with exactly one audience member in all of 50 gigs. Yes, I persisted with it for at least 50 gigs.

Any reviews, heckles or post-gig reactions stick in the mind?

Grown adult men like to approach me after gigs and tell me that I'm very brave doing what I'm doing. I would argue that I was braver when I abandoned my car in the middle of the road one time in order to herd three escaped horses back into their field, only for one of them to bite me on the boob.

How are you finding balancing comedy shows with all the bewildering awfulness elsewhere these days?

It's hard. I'm a consumer of news. Before getting into comedy I worked in public relations for 16 years so I can't go five minutes without checking news sites or I'll have rolling news on in the background like most people have music. It's extremely bad for my mental health.

I can often be found lying down, in the dark, on the bottom bunk in my kids' room, staring into the middle distance. That usually helps.

Any further plans/goals for 2022?

I might get a belly button ring. I regret not getting one first time round in the late '90s and now I see Gen Z sporting them and I'm determined to reclaim this trend for every 40-something year-old woman out there.

Oh... and complete a full run of my debut hour show in Edinburgh, relatively unscathed. That would be nice.