What a Difference a Day Makes: How losing a contract job made me fight for my comedy 

Comedian Ross Browne tells Helen O’Callaghan about the morning floods in Cork city cost him his contract cleaning job – but also led to the launch of a career in comedy.

Comedian Ross Browne at Emmett Place, Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

It was a morning in 2014. Cork had flooded the night before. I was working as a contract cleaner with my dad — he had his own company. I was also working as a comedian, doing stand-up gigs here and there.

I walked into work that morning to one of our biggest contracts, a linchpin of the business. The water was up to my shins. The flooding had gone down from the night before, but you could see by the wall it had been waist-level.