My Childhood with Alison Spittle: I didn’t talk to Dad for a few years after the divorce

Comedian Alison Spittle tells Sharon Ní Chonchúir about her early life on the move with her parents before they settled in Westmeath, and how grateful she is to them

Comedian Alison Spittle: 'I find a weird safety and power in being on stage.'

Comedian Alison Spittle’s mum was 21, and her father was 24, when she was born in Harrow, London, in 1989.

She was an only child for her first six years, until her parents, Jenny, from Westmeath, and William, from England, had four more daughters.

Their “incredibly close family unit”, she says, moved a lot as her father worked on building sites in Germany, Ireland, and Britain.

All this moving meant changing schools, which Spittle thinks prepared her for life as a comedian. “Getting up on stage is a lot like the first day of school, introducing yourself, and hoping people like you,” she says.

Her parents and grandparents “doted” on Spittle. She jokes that she was “middle class for a while, what with all the Early Learning Centre toys, books, and attention I got. I definitely went down a class once my sisters were born.”

During those early years, she didn’t have many friends her own age. She mostly socialised with her parents and their friends. However, she did find companionship in novels. She read all the Jacqueline Wilson, Roald Dahl, and Sue Townsend books and, aged eight or nine, empathised with Adrian Mole, “not realising what a big loser he was”.

Adjusting to life as big sister

Life changed when her parents had more children. The sister closest in age to Spittle is six years younger, and three more followed, the youngest of whom is 19 years younger.

Because the family was no longer as portable as it once was, they settled down in a village in Westmeath. 

Spittle didn’t find it easy and would often get into fights.

“I don’t think I knew how to interact with children,” she says.

So she developed humour as “a self-defence mechanism”. She realised that “making people laugh makes them less likely to get in to a fight with you, so I started joking around more”.

She was also adjusting to life with much younger siblings. “I felt more like an aunt to my sisters,” she says. 

Alison Spittle with her mother Jenny and father William in 1992. 

“They were toddlers I had to look after rather than kids I could play with.”

They are close now and enjoy advising her on all things beauty. 

“Whenever we’re together, they gather around like little birds to peck away at me, doing my eyebrows and trying to make me look glamorous, which is something I don’t really have in me,” she says, laughing.

Teenage years

Spittle’s teenage years were tricky. 

The extent of her romantic life was as “a shift broker: I wasn’t someone who got shifted, but I’d play intermediary between my friends and lads who wanted to shift them”.

At home, her parents’ marriage was breaking down, and they divorced when she was in her Junior Cert year.

This rupture had a huge impact on her relationship with both of them.

“Mum became more of a friend,” she says. 

“We’d still have blazing rows, but we used to sit and chat a lot. We went through things together and that made us into a team.”

Her father moved back to England, and Spittle’s relationship with him became “rocky”.

“He’s very English, the type of English person who would fly an English flag outside our house, which I found so embarrassing,” she says. “We didn’t talk for a few years after the divorce.”

They have since made up, and she says their “big thing now is watching football together. He’ll slag off Ireland. I’ll slag off England. And we’re both happy.”

Stumbling onto comedy

Spittle left home at 19 to study media at college in Ballyfermot and relished the freedom it offered from life in her small village. 

“I’d always been eccentric and was able to lean in to that more in a place like Dublin, where I could be anonymous,” she says.

It wasn’t until after college, when she was working in a radio station in Athlone, that she stumbled upon comedy as a career path. 

“A radio DJ called Bernard O’Shea, who was a stand-up comedian, told me to try it,” she says.

“So I gave it a go and immediately adored it. I find a weird safety and power in being on stage.”

Now aged 36, Spittle is as old as her mother was when she had her youngest daughter. “That gives me a perspective I never had before,” she says. 

“Thanks to the housing crisis and other stuff, I’m probably not going to have kids, so I might never know what it’s like. But I see my parents as Olympians for the effort they put in to bringing us up. I’m so grateful for all they did.”

Alison Spittle: 'Thanks to the housing crisis and other stuff, I’m probably not going to have kids, so I might never know what it’s like.' Photo: Karla Gowlett

She also feels empathy and forgiveness. “My parents love me so much and always tried their best,” she says. 

“But people are human and stuff goes wrong. We often expect people — especially parents — to be perfect. It’s not fair. Mam and Dad were incredible parents. 

"They made some mistakes. But so what? I make mistakes myself. We love each other and do our best. That’s more than enough.”

• Alison Spittle is currently touring her award-winning show, ‘Big’, which she will bring to Dublin’s Vicar Street and 3Olympia on April 11 and May 15.