Stand-up Kiri Pritchard-McLean explores foster parenting in latest show - Guildford date

She plays the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford on Thursday, November 7 – all under a title which she admits probably won't give you too much of a clue: “I had to put the show on sale before I knew what the show would be and I just picked a show title that suggested glamorous and show-off and thought that that would be consistent if you came to see me. It has nothing to do with the show but I don't regret it. I love the fact that people that come along might not necessarily know what they are going to experience – though I worry some ornithologists might be disappointed!

“But family and children have always been very important to me, and I love both those things. However for a very long time I just didn't see a way that I could have biological children. But as you get older there is more and more pressure when you see your friends having children. But I could just never see a point where I could make space for young children in my life in a way that wouldn't just rinse me out.

“But actually it was an advert on the radio looking for people to become respite foster carers. My partner and I had thought maybe we might adopt but we heard the advert during the first lockdown and we were on a beautiful farm in rural Wales and we just thought it was daft that we were not able to share the place with young people who might enjoy it and might benefit from it. And the more information we had to find, the more we thought that it would be a brilliant fit for us. My lifestyle being on tour for quite a while of the year fitted in with maybe looking at respite foster care. It means that the young people might be with us anything from a couple of hours to a couple of weeks. They come to us for short breaks, and the young people already have existing foster carers or existing biological families but it's just coming to us for a break and a holiday.

“Every young person is different and initially it was nerve-racking but I think it's brilliant that my and my partner’s relationship has become stronger, working together as a team and it really is quite a bond. And the young people that we meet are fantastic and funny and interesting and challenging and we get some of them coming back which is great. Some people come in and it's just a question of seeing them once a month and taking them out to dinner or to the cinema to boost their confidence and give them space to talk but we did also have a young guy that came to us for two weeks in total. And when they want to come back to us, then that feels like very high praise. They say that the honeymoon period is two weeks with fostering and during that time it's very easy to be warm and welcoming and you can feel refreshed and restored. Everyone can be delightful for two weeks, and that certainly fits in with us.”

Obviously in the show Kiri does not go into the specifics of individuals: “But every date on tour I make sure that the local authority fostering team are there and we have had some lovely feedback. I've always written about things that matter to me and it's lovely to see the results of the impact with this one, with people considering fostering themselves after seeing the show.”