Alison Spittle’s first taste of stand-up was inspired by a gentle nudge from Irish comic Bernard O’Shea while working on his radio show as a student. ‘If Bernard didn’t tell me to do stand-up, then I think I would only be starting around now, after several failed attempts at something else,’ says Spittle, now with five Fringe shows, a hit podcast and an EastEnders cameo under her belt. ‘I did it and I got these incredible endorphins; I just wanted to chase that feeling from then on.’

Hoping to top (or at least repeat) the success of her 2022 hour Wet, which covered everything from unpleasant coil removals to workplace sexual harassment, Spittle is dissecting her tendency to joke about personal trauma in new show Soup.

‘I realised when getting treatment for CPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder), that I’d done stand-up about everything that had affected me. I couldn’t remember the memory itself, all I could remember was the actual material. I was talking to the therapist going “oh no, there’s a punchline there”. So I’m trying to do a show about CPTSD without triggering myself. It’s hard!’

Having grown up in an Irish Catholic family, laughing through dark times is something Spittle is familiar with. ‘I remember laughing the hardest at jokes made when you, or people around you, are upset. Like laughing at funerals is the most freeing thing you can do!’ These familial moments inspire a lot of her material: ‘I am very interested in the minutiae of domestic life,’ she says, before breaking into a cackle. ‘I sound like SUCH AN ARSEHOLE! I get possessed by a cringe ghost that goes “NO”, but it’s true. I like that you could be having a row with your partner and they’re holding a mug with Danny Dyer topless on it. It can be the most heartbreaking moment of your life but that mug was still there to witness it. It’s those absurd little things.’

So where does the soup come in? Aside from Spittle’s active membership in a soup WhatsApp group and it being her chosen dream starter on Off Menu, it’s also ‘my favourite thing to talk about. It’s uncontroversial. Everyone has an opinion on soup in a way but you can’t be offended by it.’

Alongside its comforting connotations, soup can also conjure up something murkier. ‘If the ground was soupy, it would stop you moving,’ Spittle continues. ‘It slows you down. I was chatting to a lady who doesn’t like soup, and I thought that would go against every sensibility I have. But she made some good points: it is quite sloppy.’ 

An hour-long exploration of pureed veg would run quite thin, of course. Instead, Spittle will serve up entertaining tales that straddle the joy and pain of everyday life. ‘To look at something and prod or laugh at it doesn’t take away from how hard it is. It’s just another part of life. And you can laugh at everything in life,’ she insists.

As someone who openly deals with bouts of poor mental health (or how Spittle and best friend Fern Brady put it, ‘being mental’), maybe she has a point. ‘I did want Soup to be about being happy,’ Spittle continues. ‘I’m a happy person. But I do comedy about dark things because they just interest me. Also, I love one-word titles; I think I’m going to stick with them from now on. My first ever show was called Alison Spittle Needs An Agent which wasn’t a one-word title. It was a cry for help that ultimately went unanswered.’

Alison Spittle: Soup, Monkey Barrel The Hive, 2–27 August, 1.25pm.