Preview: Fathers4Justice to stage comedy gig

Remember when no crane, no motorway gantry and no government building was safe from rampaging superheroes?

No, not the early Avengers blockbusters. We're talking about fancy-dressed Fathers4Justice campaigners.

Well, now the Spidermen and Batmen are back, and this time they're playing their Jokers.

The protest group is marking this year's run-up to Father's Day with a comedy gig - Stand Up 4 Fathers.

Parents being stopped from seeing their children - and kids being stopped from seeing their dads, or mums - is clearly no laughing matter, and F4J members don't need telling that. But no one ever took any notice of their tears, so why not try humour? It's why they adopted silly outfits to get their message across in the first place, they would say.

Ten stand-up comics are set to appear at the Backyard Comedy Club in London's Bethnal Green on Monday 11th June. It won't give them the last laugh in the courts, but the thinking is that any laugh would be welcome for many of them, and might just highlight their messages.

Comedians Marcus Tisson, Jay Handley, Will Franken, Max da Cab Driver, Brandon Palmer, Icy Jones, Christopher Savage, John Watts, Scott Adams and Stand By Your Manhood author Peter Lloyd are already on the bill, with the possibility of more acts to be added.

Scott Adams, for one, will be intrigued to play to an audience likely to include many men who have not heard his jokes before but who will be very familiar with his story, because it mirrors their own situation.

"I knew very little about Fathers4Justice until recently," says Scott. "I saw some of the stunts and thought they were just jokers. I assumed, like a lot of people, they must have done something to be stopped from seeing their children; that the courts wouldn't do that without a good reason.

"It's only when you go through a difficult separation yourself, and go through the circus of the courts and CAFCASS (the Children And Family Court Advisory and Support Service), your realise how it affects so many people. It's an epidemic.

"The trouble is that, a bit like mental health, blokes don't talk about it and if they do they are ridiculed."

Scott grew up in Lowestoft, Suffolk, and moved to London when he was 19, "because I heard the streets were paved with gold". By his own admission, he was too busy partying to study and dropped out of university after failing the first year of his drama course three times.

"I couldn't even be a tree, professionally," he jokes.

He fell into set-building and other odd jobs, and did stand-up comedy on the side.

Eight years ago he became a dad when his partner gave birth to their son.

Like so many couples, their relationship suffered as they struggled to make ends meet and they split five years ago.

Scott said his access to his son was fine for the first year but slowly "the lies and excuses started" and every time his visiting weekend was approaching he would have to jump through more and more hoops to be allowed to see his boy, he says.

Making the 200 mile drive every other weekend to his ex-partner's family home, he could never be sure the rules would not have changed by the time he got there and he says he would sometimes have to make a tearful 200-mile drive home alone.

Then, four years ago, he got a text telling him to 'get a solicitor' because he would no longer be seeing his son.

"Two years and £30,000 down the line I couldn't carry on fighting. My mental health was suffering so badly," he comments.

The last straw, he said, was being asked by the courts to do an 'abusive relationships' course.

"I had been through numerous other courses in a futile attempt to see my son but I thought, 'If I do this course I would be admitting to having been abusive, which I had not been, and there was no guarantee it would get me access, only that it would be used as a stick to beat me further'."

Scott had, by then, given up the stand-up. Being funny is not an option when your heart is breaking, he says, "although so much that happened in the courts was laughable. It would be comical if it weren't so serious."

Fellow comic Icy Jones also knows the pain of not seeing his child.

The Londoner says that his ex-partner used his daughter as a weapon against him for a year when he was having financial difficulties.

"She knew just how involved I was with my daughter's life and exactly which buttons to press," he said.

Happily, he got a new job and his access to his daughter, now ten, was restored, but he comments: "I suffered anger, paranoia, anxiety and depression. I was drained. There is not enough help for fathers."

At the end of his tether, Scott Adams told the courts in 2016 he would not fight the case for two years, though he has continued to send his son gifts, cards and letters, which are never answered.

With a new partner, and a new son born 13 months ago, Adams returned to stand-up as his mental health improved.

Though he took the occasional swipe at his ex, as well as himself, in his Edinburgh Fringe show last year (Love, Hate and Some of My Mistakes), he says he doesn't bring his children into his act, because 'they have not decided to be on stage.'

But he hints that you can bet that his new set will feature a few jokes at the expense of the courts and the lawyers who are the only ones laughing all the way to the bank from the tragedy of family break-ups.

He may also be looking to his next audience for tips, as he resumes the fight to see his son this summer.