Since her last solo Fringe run, Catie Wilkins has been busy having children, among other things. But that parenting experience has provided her with novel ideas on cleaning up some of society’s ills. ‘We might be able to solve the problem of flashers if we respond to them the way that mums have to react to their five-year-old sons,’ she ponders. ‘There’s a phase that boys go through where they’re just obsessed with getting it out; and you have to be like “excuse me, I see you’ve got your winky out. That’s NOT for now.” I’m not sure it’s a realistic solution, but I do think we should give it a go.’ 

Wilkins’ last solo stand-up Fringe show was in 2012, and when she wasn’t bringing up new humans, she was co-creating the Drunk Women Solving Crime podcast and writing numerous young adult novels. ‘I paused stand-up rather than quitting. I was still sort of making notes and thinking “that’s funny, I’ve got an idea about that.” But I was writing funny parenting articles for online magazines, so I’d have an idea that could have turned into stand-up but I’d turn it into an article instead. We did live shows for the podcast, so I was keeping my hand in with the live work.’

Not that Wilkins could ever get away from stand-up completely, even if she wanted to, as she’s married to comedian Richard Herring. ‘I think what’s really helpful about it is we understand the statistics of trying to get to do stuff; everything is feast or famine. Neither of us ever asks random questions like “hey, why don’t you just go on Live At The Apollo?” We don’t have to explain how stuff works.’

One of the few confusing times that Wilkins found herself in that kind of ‘normal’ company who have a habit of asking nonsensical questions came when she was attending National Childbirth Trust (NCT) classes. ‘When I did NCT, everybody was an office worker; it was really weird to suddenly hang around with a different kind of person. They hated being at home on their own all day with a baby. I loved that because I was already doing it. I hated getting up at three, five or six… whereas they were already up at six. I had different challenges to them and loads of comedians were having kids at a similar time to me, so I set up this Facebook group called Comedy NCT.’

Now she’s back doing stand-up again, does Wilkins have a preference between writing novels or being on stage? ‘I think with writing novels you send it off for feedback and it takes months for anyone to get back to you. But with stand-up, it’s immediate. Writing is like delayed gratification, and stand-up is like, I don’t know... a doughnut. So writing is like your vegetables!’

Catie Wilkins: We’ll See, The Stand 2, Thursday 31 July–Sunday 10 August, 4.45pm.