Sarah Kendall: the worst heckle I ever received – and what I did with it

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/aug/02/sarah-kendall-edinburgh-festival-comedy-worst-heckle-sexual-violence

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All comics have material that, in retrospect, they feel uneasy about. In this clip, I tell a true story about the worst heckle I've ever received. It happened about 10 years ago, when I was quite inexperienced. It was a rough gig, and I was rapidly losing control of the crowd. I was shocked when it happened, and I carried that fear for a long time.

Then I decided to do some material about it. I told the story about the heckle and everything else that happened at a "new material night", and it went really well. Over time, the story grew and became one of the strongest stories in my set. I felt I had gotten some control back; I had taken this frightening experience and made it funny, made it my own.

I'm not sure at what point I started to feel uncomfortable about the story, but I noticed that it would provoke all these different types of laughter. There was the sheer surprise that someone would shout out something so obscene during a performance; there was the fact that it's such a rude thing to say; and there was the safety of knowing that everything probably turned out OK because I, the person who was heckled, was on-stage telling the story, and I seemed pretty relaxed about it.

Reading on mobile? Click here to watch Sarah Kendall's routine. Warning: clip contains strong language

What began to bug me was how many people burst out laughing because they thought the heckle itself was funny. Sometimes, it would be accompanied by a little round of applause. It became obvious that some people thought a heckler threatening sexual violence was a bit of harmless fun.

I thought I'd done what a skilled comic should have done: taken a personal experience – a pretty harrowing one at that – and turned it into good material. Actually, I had betrayed the seriousness of what had happened, because my story ignored the fact that I had been genuinely frightened and in a degree of danger during the heckling. Instead, here I was appearing to be a good sport about it.

In this job, you unavoidably mature in a very public space. I now know that talking about a difficult experience isn't necessarily brave. Talking about how you really feel takes a lot more courage.

• Sarah Kendall is at the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, from 2-10 and 12-25 August.