Seann Walsh: I’ve always been haunted with regret ...Middle East

Each week we ask a public figure to delve into their childhood, and look at how their early experiences influenced the man they grew up to be.

Born in London in 1985, and brought up in Brighton, Seann Walsh left school with one GCSE and started performing stand-up comedy in 2006. He appeared on 8 Out of 10 Cats, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Would I Lie To You?. In 2018, Walsh was involved in a Strictly Come Dancing scandal when he was photographed kissing his married Strictly partner Katya Jones. He wrote a 2022 Edinburgh show about rebuilding his life after – as he puts it – “an entire country collectively got together and told you they hated you”.  It was called, Sean Walsh: Is Dead. Happy Now?.

Walsh, 40, is now married to dance teacher Grace Adderley. They have a daughter, Wylda, born in 2023, and a son, Casper, born in 2025. Walsh will be touring his new show, This Is Torture, from 13 February.

I didn’t think I’d make it to 40, to be honest. I was a hypochondriac. I’d go to A&E and tell them I was dying. I also did all the things that don’t tend to lean towards a long and healthy life. But I’m alive still. However, a lot of my contemporaries in stand-up look fantastic – and TV-ready – [while] I look like the main character of a rom-com in the montage where everything has gone wrong.

If I could go back in time and give myself some teenage advice, it would be a very long conversation. But one of the main points would have been stop f*cking drinking. Believe in yourself enough to say no to the things you don’t want to do. Don’t straighten your hair. And save, save, save.

Conflict terrifies me. I find any feeling associated with social awkwardness or discomfort really hard. I don’t cope with stress at all. I usually just crash and end up in bed for five days. Heartbreak to me feels like realising you’ve lost your phone but for every second of your life for about three years. I’ve had therapy, and I found it very helpful. It taught me that I’ve done okay considering everything. When I need to feel a bit happier, I run while listening to Blink-182. That helps a lot. I watch Ghostbusters one or two for comfort.

When you’re younger, friendship is about fun. As you get older it’s more about care. I’ve enjoyed that transition. I wish me and my friends looked out for one another more. All we cared about really was drinking and getting f*cked up. I needed help but I think so did my friends. When things get hard, fellow comedians Paul Tonkinson, Mark Steel and Romesh Ranganathan will normally get a call from me. I also called my wife’s mum when I was stung by a wasp and I thought I was about to die.

My dad was a heroin addict. Hopefully my kids won’t see me even have a drink. I’ve tried to cut that cycle. But I’m self-destructive, like my old man. I always think of him when I’m leaving the house. He would always have to leave the house twice because he forgot something. I’m the exact same. My wife works with autistic children and thinks I’m autistic. Most people say I’ve got ADHD. I can’t be dealing with looking into that on my day off. I’ll have to cope for now. Maybe I’ll sort it out if there’s another pandemic -– alongside getting my Irish passport.

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I haven’t had an alcoholic drink in six years. People always want to know why you stopped. It’s only ever two reasons: you’re boring or you’re too much fun. It’s either “alcohol never really agreed with me” or “I f*cked a badger”. It’s been for the best.

This might sound like a strange thing to say but giving up drinking connected me with who I was as a child. I always wanted to be a comedian and being sober really reminded me of that. It reminded me how much it mattered to me, how lucky I was to be doing the thing I imagined doing when I was in infant school. When I was in my twenties, I got overwhelmed with it all and just wanted to be either drunk or hungover so I didn’t have to deal with reality. Now I might not be very good at coping with reality, but at least I can face it.

My wife tells me it’s a lot easier being a man. If so, then my God, women really do have my deepest sympathies. I am out of my depth when it comes to the idea of masculinity. Although, I should probably have an idea about that, given that I’m 40. All I can say is that being a human and living life is like a big extended game of whack-a-mole – but the mole has been given strict instructions to make your life as difficult as possible, and the mallet is made of yoghurt.

Starting stand-up was the best time of my life. Because I started with my best friends and our future was ahead of us. The great thing about the future is you can imagine it but you don’t have to do it yet. I have a line from my last YouTube special: “When you’re young you talk about what you’re going to be and do. When you get to this stage of life there is no be or do. There’s just am/was and could have been”. The joke is of course about how most of us f*cked it up, but actually imagining what you will do and be and believing it, is one of the most beautiful parts of life. Having said all of that, seeing my daughter and son smile tops it all every single time. I hope that never goes.

My experience of fatherhood would be very hard to explain to my younger self. It’s a new ineffable emotion you’ve yet to have felt. It’s like trying to describe an undiscovered colour. Your palette for life is about to expand to places you can’t imagine. It is the most wonderful of things that connects you to humanity and what it is to be alive, like nothing else can. It is a shame society makes it difficult to have a family at a younger age now. I wish I’d known, before I became a father, that I’d become a father one day. Partly so I could have saved some money…

What keeps me awake at night? I was given a lot of opportunities in my young adult life, but I didn’t understand what to do or what I could do with those. That often keeps me up. That and the blue light on the WiFi router. My greatest fear, though, is not being there to watch my children grow up.

I’ve always been haunted with regret. I remember in school Mr Hill took me to one side and said: “Never look into the past, always look to the future.” He was a great man, but a terrible history teacher.

My most useful bit of advice is to do with organising my life. “Leave it there for now” actually means “put that there forever”. Just give it two minutes of thought and then put it where the f*ck it’s meant to go.

Seann Walsh will be on tour with THIS IS TORTURE from 13th February. Tickets are on sale now and available from: www.seannwalsh.com

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