Alison Spittle: ‘I was kind of like an incel learning how to seduce women’

Alison Spittle:

My dad was a builder; we moved around a lot. I was born in England and we settled in a place called Ballymore in Westmeath.

I remember watching Beauty and the Beast in the cinema and crying when Gaston died. He’s a bollocks, but he didn’t deserve to fall off a roof. That’s my first memory.

I definitely think I became a stand-up comedian because of my childhood. Because I was in so many different schools, I learned that if you were nice to people and you were funny, you’d make friends quicker.

I was kind of like an incel learning how to seduce women by wearing a hat — but I would give people compliments and tell jokes. There was this book called The Game — it was a big thing in the mid-2000s. This dude said if you wore a fedora and you gave a woman two compliments and one put-down, it would make it easier to have a dalliance with her.

I used to do a lot of impressions. Me and my cousin, Anthony, once did a fake radio show and we made our own songs about our mothers’ enemies. They’d be having a coffee and smoking a fag and we’d play the tape of us singing a song about a woman they hated in a very derogatory manner — they loved it. We were the propaganda arm of the family; united in our hatred for one woman. We were terrible. We’ve since buried that tape.

The only reason I’m still doing comedy is because I had a great landlord, Phillip. A good landlord is like having a rich dad. He never put up the rent. Moving to Dublin was very hard. I didn’t have a lot of money and I wanted to be working in a creative field.

I grew up on a council estate and the reality of it is you have to have a job. I was allowed to fart around for a bit because I got very lucky. I could walk everywhere so I’d save money that way.

My proudest achievement has been playing the Royal Albert Hall with The Guilty Feminist and supporting my favourite comedian, Maria Bamford. She’s actually a hero of mine.

I love table quizzes and I’m very good at trivia. It’s also my worst quality because I’m very competitive. I’ve been quite angry and hidden the ball on my dad in mini golf. Once I found out this woman’s song and I learned it so I could sing it before her in karaoke. That’s how petty I am.

If I’m looking for actual logic, I turn to my boyfriend. If I’m looking for someone to pick something apart even though it’s not going to help me, I have several friends for that.

If I ever have a child, what I want to pass down genetically is a good nail bed. Floss is my biggest piece of advice. I did not listen and I regret it.

The older I get, the less afraid of death I am. There are people that I love that have died and now I struggle to remember the memories that we had. It’s just the human brain.

I would have done better on my Leaving Cert [if I could change anything from my past]. I really let school get away from me and I regret that. I just did the absolute bare minimum.

I think as a teenager, I was so depressed that I just didn’t want to make any effort. I would like to change that because I was still full of potential.

Climate change has given me a whole different sense of existential dread. I eat way less meat now and I look for alternatives. And I am taking the train a lot more.

My greatest skill is that I’d make a great spy. My friend met a guy at a party and she couldn’t find his name on social media. I did some deep digging to figure out who else was there and I found him. I couldn’t be an investigative journalist because my mouth is way too big. I’d be a good person in a van going, “he’s behind you”.

The stuff I get anxious about actually happens to be a lot better than I thought. I don’t feel any better from predicting it or worrying about it and if it does turn out to be bad, it’s usually not the end of the world.

I genuinely get scared about so much stuff. I went to Morroco with this TV show for RTÉ and I realised that I was scared of just about everything, you know? I’m very scared of sour milk. When it’s so sour it’s actually solid. I can’t. I actually can’t.

Moving to England was my fork in the road. What would have happened if I took a different fork was that I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford to stay in Dublin. I’m paying the same rent in London that I do in Smithfield.

I love Dublin. But you can’t afford to live there for the opportunities I was getting, on the set. You know, there’s like, there’s only one place to get a TV series and I had that already. And I could never afford a house, I was spending all the savings I had renting.

• Alison Spittle presents the BBC podcast, Wheel of Misfortune with Kerry Katona.