It’s difficult to mention a former career in stand-up comedy without sounding like David Brent, so I apologise in advance. 

I once worked as a stand-up comic and compère on the Northern and Scottish circuits. I ran and hosted my own club (Spot On Comedy at The Brickyard - first Sunday of every month), and in 2002 earned the dubious honour of being named Cumbrian Comedian of the Year.

To be honest, we’re not known in Cumbria for our tradition of wit and subtle humour - we have an annual face-pulling competition, for heaven’s sake - and, frankly, I’d have gained more local approval if I’d come away with Best in Herd. But, at the time, it seemed like quite an achievement.

Was I any good? I was OK. Certainly not as dreadful as my review on Chortle suggests. I’ll save you the bother of Googling it by leaving the link here, although you could just as easily find it by reaching into my chest and finding the words “weak observations” branded across my heart. Obviously, this was over 16 years ago and I’m over it, so there’s no need for me to point out the more glaring inaccuracies in the review. And I still maintain that my smear-test gag, with the vulva/uvula mix-up and the punchline “Blimey, that’s a powerful torch you’ve got there…” remains a cracker. But, honestly, I’m over it. It’s OK. I am.

Shouting filth at strangers

Why did I give it up? Teaching by day and gigging by night was hard work. And, when I took on a role in school where I was paid handsomely for upholding high standards of behaviour, somehow shouting filth at strangers for money in my spare time seemed less appropriate.

And why - I’m sure you’ll be eager to know - am I bringing it up now, apart from desperately trying to prove that I’m basically a chilled-out entertainer? Well, it cropped up - as these things often do - in a conversation on Twitter about working memory. I discussed how I realised, through a process of trial and error, that learning my comedy set by heart was liberating, not limiting. 

When I started stand-up, I wrote bits and pieces before gigs - new stuff almost every time - but it was clunky and, by its very nature, unpolished. 

Club comics usually start their careers as open spots (unpaid five minutes) and get to work alongside - and learn from - more experienced performers. During a weekend booking at The Stand Comedy Club in Glasgow, I was at the foot of a bill headed by club stalwart Vladimir McTavish. The first time I saw him perform, there was a moment where he lost his train of thought and went off at a hilarious tangent, then apologised to the audience for being distracted and resumed his set. Brilliant! Spontaneous wit at its best. 

The following night, he did the same piece and - oh, my God - ran through the exact same patter: appeared to become distracted, delivered the same diversion, apologised and carried on. Every syllable, pause, beat was the same. It wasn’t spontaneous at all. It was crafted, rehearsed, polished, and all the better for it. 

Of course, this should have been obvious to me: let’s face it, we wouldn’t shove a soprano on stage with a basic outline of the plot of Tosca scribbled on a Post-It note and expect her to deliver anything worth listening to.

The most empowering experience in the world

I went home, rewrote my set and learned it. Off. By. Heart. I was able to hone each phrase and tidy up each punchline, rather than grasping for something half-remembered. But, most significantly, as my working memory was freed up, I could be spontaneous if I needed to be.

I did a lot of compèring, so interaction with the audience was important. And, although the compère never asks a question she hasn’t prepared a reply for, there are always exciting moments when a punter’s reply is brilliantly unexpected. 

The job of the compère is not to be lost for words, and I found that, if I knew precisely what I was supposed to be saying next, I could be sharper and - dare I say it? - more creative in my response. When it went well, when I’d got it right, it was the most empowering experience in the world: it felt effortless; it felt like spilling out a glorious song. And isn’t that exactly what a well-prepared lesson feels like?

Good comedy - like good teaching - is planned, honed, reviewed and improved. The better your subject knowledge and the more you know how you’re going to teach it, the clearer your lesson is. But it’s also good learning. Knowing something by heart is empowering. 

If the basics are embedded, a student can do more with them. If she doesn’t have to struggle to remember what Lady Macbeth says in Act One, Scene Fve, she’s more likely to be able to explore how Shakespeare has used those words to create meaning. Learning by heart doesn’t reduce students to robots - it liberates them.

Other lessons from comedy

I discovered other useful lessons from comedy. Former Stand owner Jane McKay told me: “Always start on time - even if the place is half-full. If you start late, the punters assume it’s OK to arrive late, and no one will ever take your start time seriously.” Meetings, assemblies, lessons, parents’ evenings all benefit from this rule. 

Like schools, comedy clubs run a tight timetable. Unless you’re the headliner, don’t overrun. A minute before the comic’s set is due to end, a massive red light flashes on to the stage. That’s your signal to wind it up. If you overrun, you take away other performers’ time, and you make it harder for the bar staff to do their job in the interval. And, if you’ve exceeded your allotted time - whether it’s by 10 minutes or half an hour - it’s likely you’ve lost control of your material. The parallels with school life are obvious.

Meanwhile, everything in a good comedy club - the stage height, the sound system, the length of the interval - is designed to fulfil the purpose of the venue: for performers to entertain and the crowd to be entertained. Imagine if everything we did in schools was there specifically to promote learning. 

In both comedy clubs and schools, the behaviour policy works best if it’s clearly communicated and understood, and followed by every single member of staff. In a club like The Stand, customers who won’t comply are asked to leave. Now, I have to admit, this is the point when my carefully constructed analogy begins to break down: education is a human right and comedy is a luxury, so excluding a rowdy heckler from a comedy club is quite clearly not the same as excluding a child from a classroom. 

As it’s the holidays and I’m aware you scamps have time on your hands, I have no intention of igniting the exclusion/no exclusion debate and ruining everyone’s summer. Still, it’s not rocket science to work out that, if everyone in an organisation shares the same expectations, the work of that organisation can be carried out more effectively.

Do I miss stand up? Not really. I have the occasional twinge of envy when I turn on the TV and someone who started as an open spot long after me is chuckling away with Graham Norton about their Bafta nomination, or they’re capturing the heart of the nation on Strictly or - God, don’t start me - hosting Top Gear. 

It was worth it, though. I had fun and it was - as it turns out - great CPD.

Sarah Ledger has been teaching English for 33 years