Rhod Gilbert: "My agent signed me after seeing me sh*t myself"
Rhod Gilbert has revealed how losing control of his bowels helped him get ahead in his career.
Appearing on a live episode of James Acaster and Ed Gamble's Off Menu podcast, recorded at the London Palladium and released this week, the Welsh stand-up confirmed a long-standing rumour about one of his first appearances at The Comedy Store in London.
Gilbert had been suffering with food poisoning. But he told Acaster and Gamble that the 10-minute spot at the famous venue, for a new-ish comic, is "the gig everybody wants to get. It's a big, exciting thing."
So he decided that the show must go on and took to the stage.
But after seven minutes, "I shat myself in front of 500 people".
Painting a picture, he added: "Didn't go down the leg and over the shoe."
And he told his laughing interviewers, "you know how important it is if you're doing 10 minutes at The Comedy Store. They put a red light on for you at nine minutes. You get off at 10! Not 10 and a half minutes, not 11, not nine, you get off at 10, right?
"At seven minutes I thought, 'I've shat myself'. But I kept going. I did about eight and I thought, 'this is ridiculous, come on have some fucking respect'.
"So I sort of shuffled off through the door at the back of the stage. And Don Ward, the guy who set up and runs The Comedy Store, he comes back and he went: 'Hmm. You only did eight minutes my boy!'
"And I said: 'I'm really sorry. But I've shat my trousers!'
"'What, on stage?!'
"'Yeah.'
"'And you still did eight minutes?'
"'Yeah.'
"And he went: 'Have you got an agent?'
"And he signed me up, on the back of that, on the basis that I persevered, having shat myself.
"And I've been with the same management ever since."