Comedy full-time for Abi Carter-Simpson as she plays Worthing

“I trained in musical theatre at Guildford School of Acting. I was there from 2010-2013 and it was brilliant. It was the best years of my life. It was always my big passion. I loved musical theatre and I loved musicals. I just loved it and actually theatre really gave me the confidence as a kid to get on stage. I was talking to my granny the other day and she was saying it's so funny that I am now doing stand-up because I was always so shy as a child. I was just so nervous and if anybody asked me to sing, I would just go running to my room. I said to her that I didn't know whether I was just being shy or being over dramatic! But I did theatre for years and years.

“And then when I left drama school, the actor musician-thing was coming in, and I was asked quite a lot by casting directors what instrument I played. And I didn't so I genuinely just googled what is easiest instrument play and then I started the ukulele. I started playing and I started songwriting and then I started to do stand-up. I originally started just writing comedy songs and that paved the way into doing stand-up full time. At the moment it's the prominent thing even though I still consider myself as an actor. I'm a full-time comic but I'd love to think but I would get back on the stage some time.”

As for Britain's Got Talent: “It was quite wild. It was one of those things where it's been going for so long that you know the format and it just felt like a fever dream. You've seen it already and you know what the stage is like and you know what the judges are going to be like and you just go with it. But especially after Covid which was such a hard time for so many people and so many people in the arts losing their jobs and their income. I just wanted to take any opportunity that I possibly could. I trained as a teacher during Covid though I didn't put the comedy on hold completely. But I ended up loving the teaching, and it became a huge part of my life even though I'm not a teacher now. And then Britain's Got Talent was a huge opportunity. As a teacher I was always telling children that they had to believe in themselves and try to do the things that they wanted to do, and I thought that if I didn't do Britain's Got Talent and I wouldn't be taking my own advice! So I entered, but to be honest, I wasn’t expecting anything very much but I got through to the live semi-finals.

“You have to work afterwards. You still have to graft. You're not handed anything on a platter. You still have to prove yourself. You're only a few minutes on the stage and anybody will know that three minutes is nothing compared to a full comedy set. And you know straight away whether the audience is going to laugh or not. But I got Glastonbury straight afterwards which was great and I think it just gave me a push to keep me going forward and just encouragement to keep working and keep grafting and keep moving. You get knockbacks and you get no’s but really it was a green light to do what I wanted to do, that it was not just a silly dream.

“Once I had done the show, I went part-time teaching and taught music. I was teaching music by day and telling jokes by night but the comedy just got busier and busier and so I gave up the teaching in December last year and went into the comedy full time.”