Yet, despite her outward success, a persistent whisper in her mind kept her awake at night: “Is this all there is to life?” It wasn’t dissatisfaction with her job — she loved her role as a marketing manager and the creative challenges it offered. Instead, it was a yearning for something more, something profoundly different. “I realised that while I was comfortable, I wasn’t truly living,” she recalls.
“I wanted to take a risk, to push myself out of my comfort zone and live life in all its fullness and have no regrets when I look back. “I decided to try stand-up comedy as the thought of getting up on stage, telling jokes, and trying to make people laugh really scared me. It was like the ultimate challenge.
” Once her decision was made, Jane didn’t hesitate to get started and she immediately enrolled in an eight-week comedy course. Setting herself the ambitious goal of performing 20 gigs in her first year, she dove headfirst into the world of open mic nights, working her day job and then catching the tube to all parts of London in the evening. The initial performances were rough: “The first time I did it was terrifying and there were nights when no one laughed,” she says with a chuckle.
“Most of the time you had five minutes to get up and tell jokes and you are standing looking out at all these faces of strangers in the room — there could have been 30 people or just five. “There are no guarantees you will make people laugh. “Starting out I strug.