From opening for such established acts as Luisa Omielan and Hal Cruttenden, to playing Bearded Theory and Altitude Comedy Festival in Austria, Tamworth comic Jules O’Brian has been making steady progress since swapping teaching for stand-up. This month sees Jules return to Birmingham Comedy Festival with Avoid Excessive Cleavage (And Other Advice To Ignore) - a show she first performed at the festival in 2022.

Moving into stand-up, do you think teaching was a good career to come from? Did it provide you with transferable skills?
Oh, absolutely. I taught secondary English for 16 years, so standing in front of a roomful of people who may or may not want to listen to me was already very familiar territory. 

The main difference is that in comedy, if somebody talks while I’m talking, I’m allowed to answer back without having to log it on a behaviour system afterwards, or face questions about what I was doing that made them react that way! 

Teaching definitely gave me confidence in front of a room, and you learn very quickly how to read one. And you become pretty good at thinking on your feet because, like drunk adults, teenagers are spectacularly unpredictable. All of that transfers brilliantly to stand-up.

How did your solo show, Avoid Excessive Cleavage (And Other Advice To Ignore), come about?
I turned 40 and suddenly started being bombarded with advice I’d never asked for about how I should be ageing. Mostly, it seemed to boil down to ‘do not age, but if you absolutely must, could you at least have the decency to pop a paper bag over your head?’

The title came from a genuine article aimed at women over 40, which advised us to ‘avoid excessive cleavage; just wear a nice blouse’. So patronising! And once I started noticing this stuff, I saw it everywhere: laughter lines need hiding (God forbid anyone knows you’ve been enjoying yourself), banish your knees (what?!), tape up your face (seriously, that’s a thing - I’ve tried it, and I talk about the disastrous consequences in the show). Basically I was being harassed with ‘Everything’s sagging, and absolutely all of it can be solved if you’re prepared to spend enough money.’ Ugh! The annoying thing is, for all my strong principles about how ridiculous the anti-ageing industry is, I buy into it. I’m not standing on stage claiming

I’ve risen above any of it. I absolutely haven’t. So the show really came from that contradiction - being furious that we’re made to feel bad about something completely inevitable, while simultaneously Googling whatever miracle potion I’ve just seen advertised. I decided the best way to deal with the whole absurd mess was to write about it and laugh at it.

What's been the response to the show from audiences? Are you getting other women sharing their experiences?
Oh God, yes. And sometimes considerably more of their experiences than I was expecting! I’ve had women hitch up their skirts after shows to demonstrate the industrial-strength tape they’re using to hold up their ‘droopy knee skin’. I don’t think there are many boundaries left at this point, but I love that. There’s often this lovely moment of recognition where somebody goes: “Oh thank God, it’s not just me.” I’ve even had a couple of women become quite emotional because they’d never really felt they could say some of these things out loud before.

That was never something I consciously set out to achieve. I wrote a comedy show; I wasn’t trying to start a support group! But I love that people laugh, then come and tell me their own ridiculous, funny, infuriating experiences afterwards. 

Any plans for a follow-up yet?
Yes, absolutely. I accidentally tried one [new idea] out in July. I’d been on a particularly diabolical date which has almost tipped the balance on whether I can actually be bothered dating anymore. These aren’t your standard bad-date stories. There are things in there you genuinely couldn’t make up. I mean… you just wouldn’t. 

It does still connect with ageing, though, because dating as you get older is a completely different proposition. By this point, we’ve all accumulated children, marriages, exes, decades of life experience and, shall we say, some interesting backstories. There are complications that simply haven’t had time to exist when you’re 25.

Any advice for people who might fancy trying their hand at stand-up later in their life?
Do it. I genuinely think coming to comedy later in life can be an advantage because you’ve got so much more to talk about. You’ve had jobs, relationships, children, break-ups, disasters, triumphs. So you’ve accumulated a lot of life and therefore a lot of material.

I think one of the hardest things is accepting that you’re a beginner again. I’d been a teacher for 16 years. I knew what I was doing. Then, suddenly, I was walking into tiny rooms above pubs, putting my name down for five-minute comedy spots and knowing absolutely nothing. That can be, shall we say, humbling, but it’s also incredibly exciting.

All my kids are in their 20s now, and I actually think it’s a fantastic time to be young because there isn’t the same expectation that you make one big decision about what you’re going to do with your life and then stick to it for the next 40 years. God knows the world we live in has plenty of flaws, but one of the great things about it is that you can have three or four, or more, completely different careers over the course of your life. I’m trying very hard to apply that philosophy to myself too.

But you do have to work at it. There isn’t a short cut. You have to gig, write, watch other comedians, try things, fail, change them, drive ridiculous distances to perform for seven minutes and occasionally wonder what on earth you’re doing. But I started in my late 40s, and I now earn my living doing something I absolutely love. So, to use exactly the sort of inspirational quote I claim to hate in my show: you’re never too old, and it’s never too late.

Catch Jules O’Brian at Craft & Culture, Birmingham, on Saturday 3 October. For further information about this year’s Birmingham Comedy Festival, visit its website at bhamcomfest.co.uk