Booze, burgers and Bill Bailey: Former Star reporter Wayne Beese talks about his 13 years as a stand-up comedian

It is amazing how deafening silence can be for a wannabe stand-up comedian, when you are standing alone on stage and dying.

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I found out very quickly about that as it happened to me at my first ever gig back in May 2013.

Dying is a term comics use to describe shows where they get little to no laughs. It’s not a literal death – but I did feel like I had been punched in the face repeatedly when I came off stage after that first gig.

I was only on stage for five minutes, but it felt like five hours. It’s a horrible feeling.

If you’d told me that night I would go on to be a professional comedian and promoter, I’d have told you that were insane. I didn’t even know if I could face doing a second gig as I sat drowning my sorrows in a Wetherspoons around the corner from the show.

But I stuck at it – and a few weeks ago, I left my day job to pursue stand-up comedy full time, almost 13 years after that horrendous first gig.

It’s been a crazy rollercoaster of ups and downs.

I did a gong show in the north-east I was booted off stage by the audience after just 31 seconds, after making a 10-hour round trip to get there.

But I’ve also written and performed two completely different one-hour solo shows,and had the joy of getting standing ovations from hundreds of people.

Through our company, Funny Beeseness, we have booked some of the biggest names in the game. Bill Bailey, Joe Lycett, Jon Richardson to name just a few. To be able to bring these acts to the Black Country and introduce them on stage to really appreciative audiences is a great feeling.

The move to full-time comedian and promoter may have happened a bit quicker were it not for Covid.

That changed the landscape for comedians and promoters, with diaries wiped out overnight and gigs gone indefinitely.Personally as a business we had to pay out more than £50,000 in refunds for shows that had to be rescheduled over and over again. We had two shows with Bill Bailey –arguably our biggest ever booking – that were postponed six times until we were finally able to put them on more than two years after their original date.It made it a bit harder to let go of the comfort blanket of a regular wage, especially when you have two teenage daughters who have the spending habits of the Kardashians.

But the continued success of our shows – and the explosion in popularity of Jonny Cole who we manage – have allowed me to finally take the plunge and jump in the deep end.

We had run two tours largely in and around the Black Country with Jonny before weput out a couple of clips on social media in August 2024 that changed all our lives.

He had been due to do a 2,000 ticket tour in September and October of that year which was only half sold. Two shows in Tipton and Bewdley were on the verge of being pulled as we’d only sold 18 and 13 tickets respectively. The clips went viral – and we sold the other 1,000-plus tickets for the tour in just four days. That led to a 90-plus date national tour extension last year which ended with Jonny performing in front of more than 2,000 people at Wolverhampton Civic.

We’re doing another 60-odd dates this year, and will finish this time at Birmingham’s 14,000 capacity Utilita Arena.

I’m over the moon for him as he deserves all his successes. He is a genuine talent and I’m delighted he is now playing to the kind of audiences he should be playing to.

I’m also very proud of the part I have played in it – you will see me at all his shows, behind the cameras, looking for the next viral clip to rocket him even further. We’ve done over 50 million views and added more than 120,000 followers to his socials since those first clips landed.

We make a great team, and long may it continue.Just before the tour started last year we went to Amsterdam for a short break wit hour families.

We went on a canal boat tour and Jonny had brought a lady friend with him, who was sitting between us on the boat.

As we approached a bridge, our tour guide told us that as legend had it, couples who kissed under this bridge would stay together forever.

At this point the lady closed her eyes and puckered up, waiting for Jonny to deliver and seal the pact. He’d made a lot of money by this stage, I didn’t blame her.

But Jonny didn’t deliver. Instead he leant over her and shouted out: “Come here then Wayno!”

Now, I’ve always been a very heterosexual man and have been happily married to my wife for 17 years.

But I’ve always wondered, what would it take to tempt me over to try what might be on the other side?Turns out, it’s 30 per cent of a very lucrative tour!

I’m now two weeks into a life where comedy is my day job and it feels great.

I had been regularly doing 16-18 hour days as I worked the 9-5 and then moved over from one laptop to another to do my comedy work until the early hours. I didn’t watch the telly or have any spare time to myself for nine months last year.

People don’t see what you do off stage. The video editing, the applying for gigs, the booking of acts. The 10-15 emails you get every day from customers who have lost their tickets.

It is a full time job in itself, and trying to do too much took its toll on my health. I piled the weight on due to being stuck at a desk for hours on end and eating junk food late at night after gigs. I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at the end of 2024.

That gave me a bit of a wake up call that I needed to do something about my lifestyle, and I’ve been trying to get out and be more active since my time freed up.

If you have a dream, chase it. You can do it.

Just remember to get out and have a walk and lay off the booze and burgers along the way.