A few years back, journalist Jay Richardson published a piece called “Pope’s Addiction Clinic” about a bold innovation that was actually not a clinic, but a monthly show featuring comedians who no longer wished to be addicts. Located in London, it provided a space for them to go public about their deadly habits and their victorious recoveries, whether from alcohol, eating, gambling, sex/love, or drugs.

Following one man’s brave example, the performers would “divulge their bleakest, real-life moments of rock bottom.” Awkwardness, embarrassment, humiliation, and unbearable memories were transformed into hilarious material, to the cheers and applause of enthusiastic audiences.

The creative mind behind this endeavor was Liam “Pope” Lonergan, who previously had been a standup comedian for a couple of years, but got in his own way by being consistently messed up enough to abruptly cancel gigs and also otherwise earn a reputation for unreliability. While in rehab from alcohol and other substances he experienced the constant urge to get up on stage. At the same time, he saw the importance of following the advice of counselors who pushed him to abandon artifice, and expose raw emotions.

Having achieved sobriety, Lonergan started a podcast where he interviewed comedians about their experiences with the horrors of addiction and the process of recovery. One of his guests, for instance, was a man who had ridden in the ambulance with an overdosed lady friend; and who then proceeded to steal dope from the paramedics’ stock and overdose himself on the way to the hospital.

By 2018, Lonergan was working in a care home, masterminding comedy shows, and inviting other comics to share the often revolting fun. He was after the unfiltered “honesty, spontaneity and communal feeling that the clandestine ‘safe space’ encourages… a direct transmission from the id.”

Former banker Nathan Cassidy, for example, brought his struggle with gambling to the stage. Performing for and communicating with an audience filled the empty place inside him, and succeeded in leveling out his emotions, eliminating both lows and highs — which suited his peculiar psychological makeup just fine.

Standup comedy is an art form where performers can and must bring up everything and anything, not just for the audience’s entertainment, but for their own sanity and healing. “Pope” Lonergan told the journalist that he and fellow standups were challenged by their Clinic gigs to dig deeper than their customary material. They would realize this was the stuff they should have been talking about all along.

Early in 2022, the enterprising comic published the book I’ll Die After Bingo, about his decade of employment caring for the elderly and infirm. He had by then become a full-time comedian, noting with some bitterness that he made more money talking from a stage about his private parts than he ever had earned by helping to keep sick people alive and comfortable. He also, as Richardson noted, “created and hosted The Care Home Tour, in which he and other comics performed for residents in homes.”

Just last year, it was announced that I’ll Die After Bingo would become a television series, described by the author as “both light and dark; uncompromising, poetic and, yes, very funny.”

Written by Pat Hartman. First published September 27, 2024.

Sources:

“Pope’s Addiction Clinic: where stand-up and Alcoholics Anonymous meet,” INews.co.uk, June 11, 2018.

“Pope Lonergan slams treatment of carers as he publishes memoir,” Comedy.co.uk, February 2, 2022.

“Pope Lonergan’s book I’ll Die After Bingo to be adapted for TV,” Comedy.co.uk, June 8, 2023.

Images Copyright: aaronHwarren/Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic and Penguin Random House/Fair Use.