Kelly Convey on the pressure of rapid progression in her stand up career - a podcast by Steve Whiteley

In this conversation I chat to stand up comedian and writer Kelly Convey (https://www.instagram.com/kelly_convey).

Kelly was voted by The Metro as ‘1 of 9 Hilarious Women to Look Out for in 2017’. She was a finalist in the South Coast Comedian of the Year and So You Think You’re Funny competitions and has supported Russell Kane, Alan Carr and most recently Adam Hills on tour.

Kelly explains why no one needs to know her opinion on anything unless it’s funny and why it's career suicide to give your opinion at an early stage of your stand up career. She opens up about the challenges she faced moving up from paid spots to higher profile gigs, and being compared to more established and experienced comedians by both herself and her peers. And the pressure that came with that.

She describes how performing in market towns for older demographics, made her realise that if she wanted to be a mainstream comic, she needed to appeal to a wider audience. And how realising that, has changed her style of performance. She also explains why she purposely doesn’t wear anything to sexualise herself on stage to the audience and why she’s ok with that.

We talk about her former careers as a TV exec and working in the travel industry and how getting fired from her job led her committing to stand up and gigging every night for the first 6 months, which resulted in her getting signed to Off The Kerb. Then how her rapid progression from doing open mic gigs to performing 30 minute sets led to a bout of acute anxiety. She describes why it's important as a creative to be professional and have a plan of how you’re going to progress your career and realising that you are your own commodity.

We also talk about why Kelly doesn’t like performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, her approach to writing new material, finding her own rhythm and lots more!

If you like this episode please do rate and review the podcast on Apple.

Happy listening :)

Steve - @offkeysteve

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