I'm going to choose someone with whom I have personal experience, just because there's a narrative involved that hopefully makes the story (and my adoration!) more interesting. What I mean by that is one of my comedy heroes is Chris Rock. But I've never met Chris Rock or seen him live. But another comedy hero is Sara Pascoe, and I have met her. And seen her live. So I'll tell you that instead.

A little backstory, for context: I moved to the UK in 2012 from New York City. In 2002, while still living in New York, I'd spent a year trying stand-up, and I loved it but was terrible at it. So I quit, but it remained a thorn in my side, the thing I loved but failed at. This mix of love and failure was at the centre of one of my first-date conversations with my future husband Geoff who, at the time, was working in New York before returning home to London. He told me he thought I should try stand-up again. We discussed differences in the US vs. UK comedy scene, specifically that the UK had a broader definition of what stand-up could be.

Cut to 2014: we're now married and I've moved to London. And it's taken three years of nudging and confidence-building, but finally I've decided 'fuck it' (pardon my language). 'No time like the present. I think I want to try again.' To further convince myself, I started seeing comedy almost every evening. A lot of people were terrible, a lot of people were fine, some people were good, and then this one night I saw Sara Pascoe. If you can fall in love with someone creatively (if you can feel they've created something entirely for you … like someone's climbed inside your brain to work out what makes you laugh, but also – and this feels a little cliché as a I write this, so apologies for that – but also someone who can make you really think, and who you are entirely besotted with because they've made you laugh and think) then what happened that night is that I fell in love with Sara Pascoe.

She felt like some sort of comedy angel descended from on high so that a 35-year-old (me!) with a long-standing stand-up obsession could feel inspired to try. I was inspired by how innovative she was. She had her own singular way of being hilarious. There were no cheesy jokes, none of the sort of that tired badump shhh-rhythm that tells you when to laugh. It was the most remarkable, refreshing absence of any cliché. It was the opposite of derivative. And it meant (she meant) that I couldn't stop laughing. Or thinking. I remember she was doing this bit about female sex drive, and I was just watching her and thinking 'oh, OK. I get it now. Stand-up can be anything. It just has to be good.'

Sara Barron: Enemies Closer, The Stand, Edinburgh, Tuesday 5 October; The Stand, Glasgow, Wednesday 6 October; the UK tour runs Saturday 2 October–Sunday 14 November.