Bec Hill is an actor, comedian and writer famous for flip charts featuring misheard lyrics. She has a wide array of talents including as a writer (see her recent children’s book series: Horror Heights, The Slime; and hosting Makeaway Takeaway for children's ITV. She has her own podcast A Problem Squared which she co-hosts with Matt Parker.
We speak about the use of arts and craft in comedy and thinking about children’s comedy. How she found acting as a “straight actor” in David Finnigan’s Kill Climate Deniers.
How she met her partner and how he has helped direct and collaborate on her shows.
How faith helps guide her life. How her ADHD diagnosis has helped her understanding.
That all things can be funny, but do you want to make a joke out of all things? We discuss the right to offend, but think about whether we should make jokes about everything.
The best uses for PVA glue, duct tape and glitter and her practical advice for aspiring stand-up comics (it’s to do with the microphone).
You can find her socials below, do follow and check out her book.
PODCAST INFO
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3gJTSuo
Spotify: https://sptfy.com/benyeoh
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/benjamin-yeoh
Bec's socials:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bechillcomedian
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bechillcomedian
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bechillcomedian/
Bec's book, The Slime: https://amzn.to/3GgPLAU
Transcript
(Note, this is unedited so expect typos etc.)
Ben Yeoh (00:00): Hello, and welcome to Ben Yeoh Chats. If you're curious about the world, this show is for you. Should comedians make jokes about anything? On this episode, I speak to comedian Bec Hill. We talk about her comedy process, arts and craft, faith, and her work for children. Bec has a new book out, Horror Heights: The Slime, do check it out. If you enjoy the show, please like and subscribe as it helps others find the podcast. Thank you, be well. Hey, everyone. I'm super excited to be speaking to Bec Hill. Bec is an actor, comedian writer kind of famous for flip charts with misheard music lyrics, but she has a wide array of talents, including a recent children's book series Horror Heights and hosting make away takeaway for children's ITV and her own podcast, A Problem Squared, which she co-host with Matt Parker. Bec, welcome.
Bec Hill (01:04): Hi Ben. Oh, that was such a lovely intro as well. So nice. Quite often I just get she does flip charts and then I'm like, oh, I do other stuff.
Ben Yeoh (01:14): Well, actually that's one of the things I was going to ask is just your wide range of talents. I'm embarrassed to say when we first met, I had no idea you were a famous and brilliant comedian as well, because I thought you were a straight actor as you were in my friend's David Finnigan's play and I came to help out one rehearsal and I thought, oh, look at all of these great actors and everything and it turns out that actually there's a whole other vast array of stuff that you do and are potentially more famous. I guess you've got so much going on, do you think there's going to be any more time for straight acting in your life and how do you think of all of the multitude of things that you do?
Bec Hill (01:54): Oh, good question. First of all, thank you. I don't think I've ever considered myself to be a famous anything and also I love that you thought that I was a proper actor cause I think that was the first proper-- I had to audition that sort of thing that I'd done before or since high school or whatever. So that meant a lot as well cause I really enjoyed doing that play. It was really fun. I did acting in school, so it was something that I really enjoyed but I've always been better at being myself on stage than being someone else. And so, that's why I sort of ended up moving into stand up and all the different avenues that that takes me, but there's always been a little part inside me that's been like, oh, plays were fun though. I love the team element of putting on a play, you don't really get that so much in standup. So, I know this isn't your question by the way, but I'm just realizing that I'm already like, okay, look at all this stuff, let's unpack it now. All right.
Ben Yeoh (03:07): No, please. Go ahead and chat away.
Bec Hill (03:12): So yeah, I would definitely love to act more to answer that question. I think there'll definitely be time for it at some point in the future and I like writing for TV and so whenever I write or pitch stuff, live action stuff for especially adults, I always try and write a role in that I could maybe play cause sometimes I'm like, oh, it might be easier to get into something if I'm the one in charge.
Ben Yeoh (03:41): Plenty of actors end up doing that. They have to write for themselves because the parts that they want aren't written for them.
Bec Hill (03:50): Yeah. Although what I loved about David Finnigan's play, Kill Climate Deniers, was how-- cause they approached my agent who sent it onto me and that character Catch who I got to play, she's like a lead terrorist and I loved her character as soon as I read the script. I thought she's so unhinged but at the same time, so right. It felt like she's where a lot of people would be if they just got sick of not being listened to and just got pushed over the edge to where they start not doing the right thing morally and that is such a fun character to play because I know in real life I would never go there, but it's fun to pretend you're that person and that was really fun. I would like to do more stuff like that. I like playing a baddie, but like a charismatic baddie because it's so different. Also I was writing for kids TV at the time. I was writing for an adorable show called School of Roars on CBeebies and I had some tight deadlines. So on a weekend, I might have an afternoon and an evening of the show where [Inaudible:00:05:20] lot of swearing and [Inaudible:00:05:22] and all this sort of stuff. And then I would go home and be like, "Winston had a lovely new pair of glasses," and just be writing a really cute dialogue for little monsters that go to school, just dealing with everyday life.
Ben Yeoh (05:37): [Inaudible:00:05:37].
Bec Hill (05:39): It was really cute. It was really fun. And I think that's what I really like about doing different things is that it helps balance you out a bit. Anytime I'm focusing on one thing, like one outlet, it's when I get a bit sort of in my own head and it sort of affects me in a very negative way. So it's good to have other things to balance it out.
Ben Yeoh (06:02): Do you like working with other people because I reflect that it seems to me that comedy, particularly standup, is quite lonesome. I mean, I guess occasionally you might have a director, but often you are just kind of creating it all yourself, so you don't have that kind of collaborative rehearsal thing. And often, you're not taught in the same way, "taught" sort of in quotation marks, it's just sort of learn on the job type of thing. I often think of it as a little bit perhaps like carpenters or craft people, you kind of have to learn by doing quite a lot. There's only so much you can learn by watching or reading, which you can to a certain extent. I mean, how's your kind of comedy craft coming along? Is it just doing that and do you like to collaborate where you can?
Bec Hill (06:53): Yeah, I definitely had to learn as I went. There were certainly no courses or workshops when I started out in Adelaide. It was quite a small scene but a very supportive scene. I like working with other people. I think my favorite, [shows] are the ones where I tend to know the other acts are on and get along with them. It becomes more of a social event rather than just work. It's like the difference between working in an office where you get on with everyone there and enjoy catching up with them and working in an office where you have nothing in common with the other people. So, it can be lonely if you're doing a gig, especially a gig that's maybe in a different city or something and either you are the only person who's been booked and you don't know anyone else or the other acts you've maybe never worked with, or maybe it's a different type of scene, that can feel quite lonely. Especially if you're coming home on your own, you're sitting on long train journeys and stuff, but generally speaking, it's quite a social job, I guess.
Bec Hill (08:18): And in terms of collaboration for my larger shows, for my [comedy] shows, I mean, my husband and I got together-- we've been together as a couple for about 13 years now and when we first got together, he was the front of house at my first ever solo show in Melbourne. He was from Scotland. He was on a working visa. We headed off and not long afterwards, I applied for my British passport and followed him back over. The rest is history, but one of things that we connected over is, he was always really supportive of, I mean, it was my first solo show, so it was fine and he was really supportive. He'd have to watch the show loads of times cause Steve would bring in the audience and then sit beside to make sure that everything was going okay, if anyone had to go the loo or something, and I remember I tried to woo him, impress him cause I thought he was quite attractive and I thought, I know what we'll win him over, I'll send him a script I'm working on and he'll see how funny I am and he'll fall desperately in love with me. And I sent him the script and in any other situation I would advise against this. If I was where I am now and this had happened, I'd be like, this is so patronizing but he sent it back with a few additions and they were so on the mark of what I was doing, they just absolute complimented what I'd already put there and he just got what I was doing and just added a couple of little extra ending gags and I remember thinking, oh, this guy gets me and he is very funny, I definitely want to work with him.
Bec Hill (10:14): So when I first started doing, especially when I moved over to the UK and I was trying to make more of a career out of it, I would run all of my material past him before I went to new material nights. A lot of the time he would come to the gigs with me and sit there and take notes. I mean the amount of times he would work like a director and he would take notes and note the are times that I said throwaway lines that I might want to remember and try again, or I might want to slightly tweak something the way that I said to see if it would get a bigger laugh and because we're so close and we read each other really well, I felt comfortable to say, if he suggested something, that I didn't agree with, I could be like, "No, I'm not going to do that." Or I would be, "I'll try it but if it doesn't work, I'm not doing it again." And then after several years of that it got to a point where I realized he's so talented, he's an amazing writer and he was kind of wanting to do more stuff with that and he had started to get a real interest in theater more than stand up. And eventually I was like, "Do you know what? I need to walk on my own two feet, I can't keep dragging you around to every gig. It's not fair on you and you need to put your skills into something that you want to do because otherwise this whole relationship is building my career and that's not fair on you."
Bec Hill (11:38): So he started to write more theater based stuff and I sort of started to work more independently but when I do big hour long shows, he still directs them. So I still run stuff past him to see what he thinks. If I make a new flip chart, I end up practicing the flip chart to him because I know that he'll pick up on if I need to slow something down or speed it up or whatever. So that is very much collaborative, as much as I like to take credit for myself, I mean, and I'm just lucky that our partnership works in that way. I would say that for a lot of people, it's not necessarily someone that they're in a relationship with, but it might be that your collaborative partner is your best friend or it might be a mentor or something like that. But I think it is important to have someone who gets you, who you trust their opinion and you know that they're thinking about you and what you are trying to say rather than trying to speak through you and he's very good at that. So yeah, he's directed all of my shows and even with Horror Heights, even with the writing, he always ends up reading, I always get him to read the draft before I do the rewrite in case there's something that my editor has maybe missed or if I'm not sure about something. I can't always get a hold of my editor, so I'll be like, what do you think about this? So, yeah, it's important to have a person or even several people to be able to bounce off [Inaudible:00:13:17].
Ben Yeoh (13:18): That's beautiful. I have the same with my partner. She often looks at my things or I'm trying to do a performance lecture piece, at the moment I'm kind of always say, "Oh, is this slide okay or not?" It's kind of quite important to have that. It's a really beautiful story. I guess on the first script, did a little paper heart also fall out or it's just like, you need a gag here and that was it, you were in love
Bec Hill (13:42): No, he didn't say you need a gag here, he just wrote it in as if it was part of the script.
Ben Yeoh (13:46): Okay.
Bec Hill (13:47): And I remember thinking, oh yeah, this is good but yeah, I think as time, no, actually I don't think he's ever cut anything out. I don't think he ever cuts my stuff. I think he only ever suggests ways to improve it, which is probably a very good way of-- maybe that's why I respond to it so well. I was never good with the crossing out stuff.
Ben Yeoh (14:09): Yeah, the red pen, like A, not red and B just crossing out. And having someone who can be the person in the audience who's gauging the audience cause when you are performing, you can note some things, but you're not going to note it all down cause you're in the moment of performance is quite helpful to have someone who's on your side going well, that was good by actually I think it could be better or something like that because they're taking notes for you.
Bec Hill (14:37): Yeah, there's a lot of comics who also record themselves. So they'll do a video or audio recording and they'll either watch it back later or listen back later. I don't do that. If you do that, you will get further, faster. You will become a better comedian faster. I've never been in a rush. I'd rather not have to listen to myself and learn the long slow way than have to listen to myself. I think that would take the fun out of doing the gig for me, but there's some comics who are eyes on the prize. So, good for them.
Ben Yeoh (15:13): Well you got to keep it fun as well cause as soon as it doesn't get fun, I think that the whole thing collapses, but it's interesting cause I think when I reflect a lot of creatives, but particularly in comedy people on the outside don't realize quite how much craft has gone into what you see. It isn't maybe just that spontaneous, oh, I just thought about that. It's been very finely honed and that continues to get re-honed. One of the great things about your comedy is it strikes me is that you seem to be one of the rare comedians that crosses over age groups and a lot of things as well. I mean, into children's comedy. I mean, maybe not all of your things are aimed for children, but a lot of it actually would and you cross into the absurd, which I like, you use arts and crafts. You cross across kind of, I guess, you'd say nerds and docs and science fiction and those sort of interests. Do you find yourself kind of drawn to the fact that you can speak to such a wide cross section and I mean maybe more of that type of comedy kind of makes the world a better place, but yeah, it was interesting about your use of that and into children's comedy.
Bec Hill (16:25): Oh yeah. Well I was one of the many female comedians who got diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. So that helped explain a lot about how I don't like doing shows where I have to just stand there and talk. I find that very boring and exhausting. I like standing and talking and I can, but if I'm going to do it every day, I need some variety. So I've always tried to mix it up with a bunch of stuff. So, I might do a bit of observational type chat stuff, but I might also do a little game interactive thing or I might pull out the flip chart and do a bit with that. There's all sorts of things that I've done, called members of the audience out and done sketches and stuff with them or had dance breaks. Yeah, I like to switch it up cause that keeps me interested and involved and I think because kids generally have shorter attention spans, it just works well for kids and also I am a big kid at heart. I always have been and for a long time, people kept saying I should do stuff for kids and the stuff that I did wasn't aimed at children, some of it wasn't, it wasn't that it was overly inappropriate, but it just I reckon would be quite boring for kids cause it might be a set about working in a call center and kids don't care about that. But some of the other things obviously do work for children and I think-- I'm glad that that happened and people kept telling me to do more kids' stuff.
Bec Hill (18:20): I actually didn't have the guts to move into kids comedy on my own at the beginning. A friend of mine, Mark Trenwith, from Adelaide who's another standup comedian mainly for adults, but he wrote a kids' show and he's Mr. Snot bottom and it's done very well. I think he still is Mr. Snot Bottom. I think he tours around and does quite well off of it. I can't remember if he's had TV, but he's certainly the favorite and he brought the show over to Edinburgh Fringe one year and he had two characters. One was hanky and the other was flam. So I got to play Flam and when I say play Flam, I think I was one of those plastic ponchos and I think he just would call me in off of the side of the stage a couple of times in the show and I would help out with stuff, but it was mainly his show. It was just that I got a little bit of money out of it and got to be on stage and muck around. But then afterwards I was like, I could probably write something like this, this is really fun. And so I got together with another comedian called Tom Goodlift who isn't doing comedy at the moment, but he is very funny, an incredible writer and very, very tall and the other things are important but he's a talented comedian, he's a talented writer, but it helped that he was tall because we did a show called Bec and Tom, a double act and he's so much taller than me that it just looked funny.
Bec Hill (20:02): When we walked on stage, the size difference was funny and the images were funny to draw out, to get photos of and get printed. So that was the first thing I did was a bunch of sketches with Tom where we sort of played really heightened versions of ourselves and when that went well, there was a few times we got asked to do stuff together for other gigs when you work in a double act, you have to split the fee and sometimes the fee split just wasn't worth us both doing it. It just didn't work out financially and so I was like, all right, I'll start writing some stuff on my own so that if that happens, then I can be like, okay, I'll do the gig. So I started doing that and then Bec and Tom, we toured the show that we wrote with that for a while. It did really well. We developed it, we had it option and we developed it for a pilot for BBC which unfortunately didn't get past that stage.
Ben Yeoh (21:11): Oh, what do they know?
Bec Hill (21:12): I know and the thing is funny enough, there's still quite a few people at the [BBC] who are really sad it didn't get through every now and then. I mean, this was years ago now and I'll still end up working with them on other stuff and they'll be like, oh, I can't believe that never got through. I've still got the script. I will still send it out if I think that there's anyone who will take it, cause it was a fun show but when that ran its course and Tom started stepping back from comedy, I just kept at it with the kids' stuff and it became sort of a bigger and bigger part of what I do and yeah, it was fun. Weirdly I started to try and do more and more stand up for adults that did cross over into kids comedy and that actually made things really not just handy for me, cause it meant that I didn't have to write twice as much material, but also I was amazed at how often the adult audience has responded so well to the kids ones. And there's a flip chart I do that's-- it's like a list of volcanoes and it's all puns on the word volcano and it's really dumb and really silly and I did it for a kids' science show and they liked it. I did it later at an adult gig just to see how it went down and it went even way better than it did with the kids and I was like, oh, some adults just want some silly stuff that doesn't challenge them too much. And so yeah it sort of organically came about from there and has just been getting better at honing it for kids as time goes on.
Ben Yeoh (22:54): And has arts and craft always been a big part of your life as well as kind of coming into comedy? Or is it kind of you thought of like, oh, flip charts and stuff and a bit of arts and crafts and therefore it's become one of your things. I kind of feel like art and must have been a part of your life.
Bec Hill (23:13): Oh, absolutely. I think a lot of people, when you hear the term arts and crafts, it sort of brings up those craft shops. There's always an elderly lady that works there that listens to radio four or something, that sort of got this--
Ben Yeoh (23:39): Knitting in the corner.
Bec Hill (23:41): Exactly. There's a lot of that or people think of stuff that you maybe make in school usually with toilet rolls, which I'll be honest, toilet rolls are very handy. But it was more that I was creating-- as a kid, I would create stuff because it felt like it was a necessity, not like for living, but an example of one that I remembered recently was when I was in primary school, we were doing a school play and they needed all these characters to wear Australian cork hats and they're not going to buy a bunch of Australian cork hats for kids that will just end up getting missing or whatever. So they were like, oh, we're going to make our own and I remember our teacher showed us how to make a newspaper hat and then paint it brown and then put corks hanging off it. And I remember being furious as a kid because I was like that doesn't look like a hat, it looks ridiculous. That doesn't look like an Australian cork hat. You've got this strings, like there's no rim on it. So the string with the corks is just lying against your face and it' this weird sort of triangular shape. I just remember being really annoyed that it didn't look like a Australian hat. And so, we were allowed to use the arts and craft thing.
Bec Hill (25:11): So I took out some cardboard from the cupboard and made a strip to go around my head, the main band of a hat and then I traced out the circles into the card from that. And so then I made a top for it and the brim for it, as I cut out a big round circle, just made the shape of a hat out of card and then taped it together with masking tape and then painted over it and then put the corks on the end. And my teacher was really impressed and some of the kids started to copy me. This sounds like a massive brag, it's not. This is the only time that I've been a trend setter, but that's the sort of-- That's where all my arts and crafts comes from is normally because I'm like, either there's a better way to do this or just say, I wonder if this might work and then experiment and sometimes it doesn't. I've got a lot of flip charts that saw one gig and never [Inaudible:00:26:12] again. They're down by my feet right now actually. The whole room is full of them.
Ben Yeoh (26:21): Graveyard of flip charts.
Bec Hill (26:22): Graveyard of flip charts, but yeah, it's always been a part of my life [ ] If I've wanted something or needed something, that's usually when I start using it and likewise with when I started entering standup, because I wanted to do a sketch, I was 18 or something straight out of high school I just started doing stand up, I thought I'll try doing a sketch. I didn't have a partner to do the sketch with, I didn't want to pull someone out of the audience cause I was very new and that was very scary. The idea of working with someone else, too many variables at that age. I was like, I'm not a good enough comedian to handle this if it all goes wrong. So I was like, I'll draw a picture of the two characters and I'll give them moving mouths and then I'll move the mouth and you'll know which characters talking in the sketch and the sketch wasn't that good, but the moving mouth, everyone really liked that. That got a big laugh. I thought, oh, that's a big laugh for just moving paper. So I just started incorporating that into what I was doing and it sort of went from there.
Ben Yeoh (27:46): That's amazing. It strikes me that part of it is just cause it's you, it's part of you, which I guess comes to the stage and I see it in your work, you constantly kind of trying new things and you're seeing what's working and what's not working and that's evolved, which is this great kind of both curious mindset, but also evolves in your work and everything, which I think is really great. And also riffing back on the couple of other things you were saying, just the way that your work also seems to just span a lot of people like adults and children and where you think is kind of maybe more child orientated grownups like as well and I wonder, do you think that's perhaps a little of a newer generation of comics as well, who are a little bit more aware of that? Cause when I think back and I'm not so close to the comedy scene, but there's sort of a bunch of comedians who really defend their right to offend people.
Ben Yeoh (28:54): And I think it's true that comedy and humor can obviously shine a light on what it means to be human and jokes aren't always there to be funny and then that, but it seems to me that there's this kind of newer generation maybe who don't have to be that way, they don't have to offend or say, I guess we'd use the phrase, they're not necessarily punching down or cross demarginalized groups or anything like that, but just embracing whether it's word play or absurdism or other observational stuff about what it is to be human. And this right to offend seems to be just getting perhaps a little bit old school and I'm just thinking, do you think there is this newer movement in comedy and is this a kind of good thing in the wider aspects? Or did I maybe just miss out because some of those old school comedians were just such louder voices 10 or 20 years ago?
Bec Hill (29:46): Yeah, I would say it's a real mix and obviously this is just my opinion from my own experiences. So I can't for certain say that this is, or isn't the case, but I believe that a lot of that sort of it's my right to offend that sort of thing, that comedy comes from a lot of people who benefited from a system that primarily served them. So whether that's patriarch or an ableist society or a heteronormative society, whatever it is. That's not to say strategically it is those people, but quite often it's people that were in a society that served them. So they very rarely had to think about how their words have consequences or effects and as communication becomes easier with the internet and easier for people to open up and share their feelings, I mean, for every bad thing that the internet is blamed for, there's also a lot of positives. I've learned so much more about the plights of different people from seeing snippets on Twitter and then going from there into being more curious about it. I'm from a privileged position of being a cis white woman and there's a lot of things where I was one of those people who was like, I don't do politics, I don't think about politics, I don't do it. It took me a long time to realize that that is a privilege in itself because I'm in a position where it doesn't affect me, which means that I'm doing all right and the people that it does affect, that's why I should be paying attention to it because there is an inconsistency here.
Bec Hill (31:59): So I think because things are-- There's a lot of information I would never seek out earlier and now I would either not seek out or I would feel like was so much that I couldn't take it on board and the internet is nice because it means that you can take on information in the ways that you learn best. I might not learn well by sitting there and someone directly to me you need to know about this, this and this and this, but I love listening to podcasts and I will listen to a podcast where someone is being interviewed about race riots or something. And I will learn so much there because I am very well in that medium and I can take it on a bit more. So I think the internet's been good for that and it means that we have seen this sort of era of wokeness and people are becoming more and more aware of each other and themselves. And because of that, the people who were in those privileged positions are feeling very threatened because suddenly they're now being made aware that their words and actions have consequences and they didn't know about that before. Funnily enough, it all comes down to the fact that a lot of those people feel offended because they're suddenly like, oh, suddenly what I'm doing is wrong, but I've grown up believing that it's not wrong and now I'm being told it's wrong and it's being taken away from me.
Bec Hill (33:37): And so, they're angry about that and they're confused and I understand that, cause I think a lot of us, if we were in that privilege position, not all of us, cause obviously not everyone has been like that, but I think there's some people who would react in that way, but you just don't know cause you might not be in that or have ever been put in that position of privilege. I'm making it sound very complicated but essentially I think we are seeing more and more people being conscious of what they're saying when they're being given a platform. Of course there's a lot of people that aren't and you only have to look at politics in most countries to understand that, but it does feel like a lot of those platforms are owned by the people who feel like they're losing their position of privilege and they're freaking out and the next generation are finding new platforms to talk about this stuff. Yeah. And comedy and anything live really is a good place for that because it's a lot harder for-- Rupert Murdoch doesn't have the power to shut down every comedy club in London. You know what I mean?
Ben Yeoh (35:07): Comedy's always on that frontier, it's live. You can't lock it down. It spreads.
Bec Hill (35:13): Yeah, exactly. So, I do see that happening. One thing that I will say that I think isn't talked about enough, cause a lot of people talk about offensive comedy or anything like that and they talk about it within the confines of it's not even funny and what I don't like about that saying when people say it wasn't even funny is that it suggests that if it's funny enough, it makes it okay to say. And I think a big conversation that's got-- a lot of people think-- they say, you should be able to joke about anything and I think it's less about-- You can make anything funny, but I think the question is is that the right thing to do? I could make a joke about something that would get a really big laugh. I mean, for instance homeless people are still very much the butt of the joke in stuff whether it's TV or just jokes or just in conversation. People will still say something about, I thought you were homeless or like, oh the bum or something and it might not even be that harsh, but it's enough to say that is a bad thing. If you were that thing, that is bad, which then reinforces the idea that when you see a homeless person, they are bad and they are not worth the same amount of respect as someone who isn't down, having a tough time and that then builds, it turns into this sort of Indiana Jones sized boulder that eventually comes out into, we don't think that they are of the same--
Ben Yeoh (37:16): Value, worth.
Bec Hill (37:17): -- That we need to care about. Exactly. Thank you. Yeah, value and worth and therefore our system aren't put in place to look after them and not even look after them, just to make sure that people don't end up in that position and I feel like there's a lot to be said about I mean the analogy I always say is that it's a bit like-- just because a poisonous berry is delicious, doesn't make it any less poisonous and I feel that same way about comedy. I think just cause something is funny, doesn't make it not toxic.
Ben Yeoh (37:59): Yeah. I mean you can make art about anything. I think that is true, but should you make art about everything? That seems to be very wise thoughts from you.
Bec Hill (38:12): And it's more about what you're saying, I think, it's the message. What is the message? What are you actually saying with your art or your joke or whatever? You've got to look at why you've said that and why you think it's funny or why you think it needs to be said.
Ben Yeoh (38:31): Yeah. And reflecting about a couple of things you said about I guess woke and the internet and things. Woke [ ] in its kind of original sense was to be awake, to be alert to these things where we weren't. I certainly wasn't alert to all of some of these things and I think the internet, social media is a little bit like the force, there's the dark side, but there's the light side and it depends on whether you are the Jedi or [Sith] about it because to your point, I've learned a lot from social media about neurodivergence, disability, a lot of these things, which I don't think I could have learned about easily in any other way, really. I mean, it was possible, but it wasn't just going to come to my fore which I think is quite interesting on both of those things. And I was speaking to another comedy actor Sally Phillips the other week and disability came up because she has a son with down syndrome and so there was a lot of that on awareness. But also faith came up because she's got quite a strong Christian faith and I think that's also one area, which I don't think I would've learned as much about without social media and the things. And I've picked up that it's come sort of later on in your life as being kind of quite important to you. So I'd be interested in your reflections and it was kind of interesting about what you were saying about how we treat people like homeless people and I think people, for instance-- obviously we can all, and I'm kind of making some mass generalization here, but if you can think about faith in things, that's one of the ways that we get to treat humans as humans, no matter kind of where we're kind of been and come from. So, I think maybe it's quite an important component, but I'd be interested if that has reflected at all in your comedy or your work, or has it just been much more a personal reflection on how you're living your life?
Bec Hill (40:32): I don't think it noticeably reflects in-- I don't purposefully set out for my work to reflect it, but I hope that it does. I think if I'm doing my faith and my beliefs justice, then I hope that there is an element of what I put out that sort of carries on that message and people are able to take from it what is needed. Faith is really hard and it's not so much the believing actually. The believing, I sort of deal with like most people, there's ebbs and flows, sometimes you might be like, yes, absolutely, I believe in God, I believe that Jesus was a part of God's plan, I believe in the messages of Jesus. And then other days I might be like, maybe there isn't, I don't know, who knows cause that's life. We don't know. We don't know. And I think it's a really important thing is to understand that we don't know because as soon as you say you are sure you are wrong, cause no one is sure. There isn't proof in the same sense that there's proof that I am touching my desk right now. It's a lot harder to put into terms like that and faith is very helpful, but at the same time, yeah, it's really hard. I try and read through the new Testament in pieces. I haven't been as good in the last year or so because I was trying to do loads of other things and stuff always falls apart.
Bec Hill (42:47): I was doing daily exercise until a couple of months ago until stopped doing that but I remember reading a passage that for some reason it hadn't stood out to me in the past and it was essentially one of those lines about if you find someone who is in trouble and you take them in or if you find someone who's in trouble and you turn them away, they were saying whatever you do to that person, you do to me. Jesus saying I am in every person. So if you turn your back on someone who needs help, you are turning your back on me and it hits me in a way that I don't think it had before. Because homelessness is so prevalent in London, when I moved here, I very quickly sort of stopped seeing them because you start to try not to look out for the people you see on the street. You sort of try to just keep your eyes ahead and you tell yourself, I don't have time to stop and talk, I don't have change, or it's a part of a bigger problem so it wouldn't really make a difference. Quite often my excuse to myself is about my safety. I know if that person is safe, they might try and attack me, they're bigger than me. I don't know how this is going to react. There's so many things we can tell ourselves to try and avoid and you can apply this to anything. You can apply it to any sort of injustices you see regularly in life. It's so easy to turn a blind eye to it.
Bec Hill (44:50): I remember after reading that, it hurts. It makes it harder. There's still times where I'll be running because I'm running late for something and I'm running and I run past a homeless person and my brain replays that phrase and it's like, whatever you do to them, you do to me. And I think, oh, I should really stop and talk to them, I don't have time and then I'll have this internal debate where this voice is like at least make eye contact, let that person know that you saw them and you know they exist, at least give them that. And every now and then I won't, I'm too scared cause if I make eye contact, they might want to talk and then I have to stop and then I'll be late but I'm glad I have those internal struggles. And I think it's that sort of accountability side of faith that I think-- It's very easy to have. There's a lot that the church has done wrong as a whole and for our listeners, I classify myself as Christian so I'm just talking about my experiences with that. I can't say for any other faiths, but I think there is a lot to not like about what other Christians have done or what other people have done in the name of God or Jesus or their general beliefs in that area and I absolutely appreciate people's concerns with it.
Bec Hill (46:27): I've seen all different levels of different types of Christian and there's a lot that I don't agree with and then there's some that I heavily agree with or I really emulate but I think one thing is that we are very good at focusing on, again, it's like the same with the other problems. It's like, oh yeah, but the church is broken, the people in charge are corrupt, it's all about money or it's all about power. They're still to blame, but in essence the problem is is that people keep thinking about that and if everyone was to think about the faith and what that means and the message of being better and creating a world that other people are just as happy to live in as we are, then if we were to all concentrate on that, then those bigger things wouldn't be an issue, but that is hard cause it involves us giving up some part of our privilege. Whereas my privilege is running to work and having a coffee meeting or whatever it is that I'm doing and I don't want to give up that privilege and we don't like being held accountable for that and I think a lot of people don't realize that that is a big part of pushing away any type of faith is because we don't like the idea of having to be accountable for the things about ourselves that we don't--
Ben Yeoh (48:03): Blame it on the system or on something else, yeah. That's really profound and I would just echo, I don't particularly have faith myself, but from what I've heard from other people whose grappling with it is completely okay. I live in North Kensington, which is near Carmelite Monastery and there is a set of nuns there who sequester away and pray for us, the world all day, every day with quite strict vows and it was a very rare documentary about this monastery, which has been there for decades and the head of that order was saying she-- So, she went there after university, her dad forced her to go to university first. She went to Cambridge and then she turned up on the monastery's doorstep saying, this is the life for me. I think she was the head of the order for some time. She spent several years in a crisis of faith whilst still there.
Bec Hill (49:12): Wow.
Ben Yeoh (49:12): Only years later did that resolve. So it happens to even the most committed. Maybe coming down to our last couple of sections. One I did want to touch on, cause it also seems to be really important to you in your work was just having the ADHD diagnosis, but part of also a lot more people getting it as an adult, also, it seems to be a lot more women actually both on autism and ADHD because it kind of seems to express differently. I didn't know whether we would reflect on-- What do you think is maybe most misunderstood about it when people get a bit more confused, what would you like people to know? Has it been sort of helpful for you to have a diagnosis and is it still quite misunderstood when you meet people about it?
Bec Hill (50:05): Oh I think there's a lot of, well, a lot of people who I either mention it to who I've just met or friends who've known me for years are not surprised at all. That was a big thing. Funnily enough, my cousin called me because he got diagnosed and his doctor asked if anyone in the family had it because sometimes it can sort of be quite common amongst different genes. And he said, he thinks I do, but he wasn't sure. So he called me to ask if I've been diagnosed and I was like, "No" and I was like, oh, but he and I are quite similar and so he suggested that go and get checked out and then when I was cleaning out my cupboards, I found that my doctor had actually given me a questionnaire thing to fill out about ADHD over a year beforehand and I'd forgotten and I hadn't filled it out which I think should be an automatic pass. So I did eventually. It's been interesting having the diagnosis. It's been helpful in terms of communicating with other people because before I think people would-- I was quite negative to myself and I still am to an extent, but I was far more negative to myself. I was very much like I've got bad hearing or I can't multitask or I can't do this and it was very much about I'd have to broadcast to people what I'm not good at in order to work with them and that's never a good position to be in, especially when you're freelance to say to someone, if we're going to work together, these are my weaknesses.
Bec Hill (52:17): It's not a bad thing to be honest about your weaknesses, but it's much easier to say if we do this I have ADHD, it helps if I do this. It cuts out a lot of guesswork. So for instance, I used to get teased a lot, even as an adult, but I get teased a lot because you know, friendly teased, not horrifically teased, but I have a habit that my husband calls the verbal foot in the door. When you listen to this, there's probably people who go, oh yeah, I have picked up on that, but I haven't even noticed that I'm doing it, but I will say uuhh even if I have nothing to say, because I'm trying to find whatever thread it was that was in my head that maybe ran through and I didn't grab in time and while I'm doing that, I just make the noise as if I'm about to say something until I find it and sometimes that's quite a lot. And so people will sit there waiting for me to say what it is, but know what I'm about to say because I'm trying to find it. So I'll sit there going uh and my husband is like, "Oh, it's the verbal foot in the door." You're like, I'm going to say the next thing, I'm just preserving this space cause what will happen is if I don't do that and someone starts talking, then I will definitely lose the thread and then I will spend the entire time when they're talking, trying to remember what the thread was and not listening to them talking.
Bec Hill (54:06): So that was a bit easier because people were able to go, oh, this is because you really struggle to concentrate on one thing, cause everything goes through your head at the same time. So that was really just good to know about myself and it also really helped because the way that my psychiatrist explained it to me is that um ADHD or at least with the type that I've been diagnosed with, I'm not sure if it's different with different people, but she was saying that it basically means that your dopamine levels are on average lower than other people's dopamine levels and the way that you find to cope with that is to create adrenaline fueled situations so that you pick up your dopamine naturally. But because when you do that, you go past the point that you need it and so you crash and then you do it again. And so your whole life is--
Ben Yeoh (55:22): Up and down.
Bec Hill (55:22): --getting Very excited, very energetic, all of this and then suddenly, you sit there staring into space and you're completely useless for hours because you are trying to even out that wave. And there's one reason in particular that women have been diagnosed more recently and that is because there just wasn't any research done on women and they're only just now realizing this. And so in hindsight, they're like, oh-- I specifically remember someone asking my mom if I had ADHD and she got very sort of defensive because when I was growing up, ADHD meant that you were one of the naughty kids and I wasn't naughty.
Ben Yeoh (56:18): Yeah or something is wrong with you, yeah.
Bec Hill (56:21): Yeah. And I wasn't naughty. I liked running up the slide. I liked jumping off of things. But it wasn't always that energetic, you know, it was talking. I talked a lot. I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to talk about all the time but then if something caught my attention and I went into hyper focus mode, I did not want to be disturbed. I didn't want anyone to talk to me and if you did talk to me, I wouldn't hear. One thing I always say especially to my husband, I'm like, if you need to tell me something, make sure I'm looking you in the eyes, because if I'm not looking at the eyes, I'm probably gone. It's probably not going in. So that was really helpful just to understand that there isn't anything wrong with me and that I'm not just an annoying person. It's just that I am wired in a particular way and the reason that a lot of performers are being diagnosed now, and actually there's a lot that were diagnosed during the pandemic is because comedy or anything freelance art, that sort of stuff, it lends itself and you can work your own hours and you can actually fit your life around that wiring so that it works.
Bec Hill (57:42): So a lot of people don't realize that it actually serves them or that they have it because they've been doing fine compared to how other people might be like I could never do what you do and it's like, well, I actually couldn't sit at a desk all day and do the same thing every day, I would go mad. And then when the pandemic happened, everyone was forced to be at home and just basically a lot of people were like, there's something wrong, why can't I do things at the-- why is this bad? What's happening? And yeah, a lot of people suddenly went, oh, how come this is so much harder than it seems to be for-- I mean, obviously it was hard for everyone, but there was a real anxiety to do-- It's hard to explain. It wasn't an anxiety to do with the pandemic or anything, it was just an anxiety to do with-- Like, I get anxious about planning in a way that is very detrimental if I have to live to that and sometimes you do, but.
Ben Yeoh (58:53): Yeah, but not being in control. Okay, great. Well, I'm going to do a tiny last quick fire section and then wrap up. So I was going to kind of do a kind of how-- you can either do it sort of overrated, underrated or how best to use this thing. So just a few, whatever comes up, you can pass if that-- So overrated, underrated, or how best to use duct tape.
Bec Hill (59:22): Oh wait, when you say over-- do I just say overrated or underrated?
Ben Yeoh (59:28): Yeah, you can. Yeah, you can go, oh, duct tape is overrated.
Bec Hill (59:30): Did you say how best to use?
Ben Yeoh (59:32): Yeah, how best to use it.
Bec Hill (59:32): I'm going to come up with something for everything.
Ben Yeoh (59:34): Okay. Let's do it, how best to use duct tape. How best should we use duct tape?
Bec Hill (59:38): Well, I made a bag out of duct tape. I can't remember where I put it, but I made a bag out of it.
Ben Yeoh (59:45): That's best used of duct tape.
Bec Hill (59:46): It was based on the wallet technique that we used on make away takeaway just to make a simple wallet and then I made a whole handbag out of it and I can't remember what I've done with it, but it's somewhere around the house.
Ben Yeoh (59:54): Great. We should do that. That's definitely underrated. Okay. PVA glue.
Bec Hill (01:00:00): Best use is to cover your hands in it and then let it dry and then peel it off and pretend that you've got sunburn, but it doesn't hurt.
Ben Yeoh (01:00:06): Oh, great. I've not done that. I should use that.
Bec Hill (01:00:09): Oh, it's fun. It's really nice peeling it off.
Ben Yeoh (01:00:12): What's the best way of falling down without hurting yourself.
Bec Hill (01:00:18): Oh, have a crash mat. If you do have a crash mat when you fall, I remember learning this, if you're falling backwards make sure you land sort of on the flat of your back, where the shoulder blades are because that's a strong part and not your neck. Don't your neck or the lower spine.
Ben Yeoh (01:00:39): I learned that on your podcast.
Bec Hill (01:00:41): Oh, yes.
Ben Yeoh (01:00:44): What's the best system for voting? What's the best voting system?
Bec Hill (01:00:48): Oh, I mean, I should know that because we talked about it on the podcast, but I already can't remember. I think it's a party-less system. I think that we should have to vote on individual policies and when it's blind, we don't know who represents them so that the personality doesn't come into effect.
Ben Yeoh (01:01:07): Okay. That's very good. What's the best Christmas present?
Bec Hill (00:01:13): Oh, something that will make you do something that you wouldn't do otherwise. I know that sounds like a weird one, but my favorite ever Christmas present was a portfolio big enough to carry my flip charts in and after that I started to do more flip charts cause I could carry them to gigs.
Ben Yeoh (01:01:35): Yeah. That's very good. And last one of this: what's the best use for glitter?
Bec Hill (01:01:43): Well, I would say put it everywhere. I've always been a fan of when you put it in a jar with water and you turn it into a snow globe thing. My husband hates glitter, so he would say just don't--
Ben Yeoh (01:01:56): In the toilet.
Bec Hill (01:01:57): Not even that. He doesn't like it in the house. It genuinely upsets him. We are very opposite in that sense.
Ben Yeoh (01:02:08): And then final question, do you have any thoughts or advice for people, either young people or career or just on getting on in the world? Is there anything you'd like to share in terms of Bec Hill's advice?
Bec Hill (01:02:24): Oh, that's poor.
Ben Yeoh (01:02:26): Is that too hard for the last one?
Bec Hill (01:02:28): No. This is the thing that I want on my tombstone. This is a very specific piece of advice, which I just hope helps people who were in my position when I first started. When I first went to do standup, I emailed a comedian called Justin Hamilton, who ended up being my mentor and I still hold very dear in my heart. He's a fantastic comic from Australia and I said, "I'm going to start doing standup, what advice do you have?" And he said, "When you are rehearsing your first set, when you're practicing hold something in your hand. Whether it's a remote control or your hairbrush, hold it in your hand and hold it in front of your mouth. Keep doing that, whenever you're rehearsing your set, whenever you're going through your set, even if you're just running through it, hold it in your hand, in front of your mouth," he said, "Because then when you get on stage, that won't feel weird and he was dead right." It was a night where everyone else, it was their first time doing standup as well and everyone either kept forgetting they're holding the mic and it would go over here or suddenly they were down one hand and they weren't sure how to do something because they'd been rehearsing with both hands free and they didn't know how to show something. Everyone was struggling and it was of a huge advantage that I just went on, grabbed the mic and just felt natural.
Bec Hill (01:04:02): So yeah, it's a very specific piece of advice but if anyone's either starting to stand up or just learning a speech where you won't have a mic stand or something like that practice holding something in your hand, in front of your mouth. You'll feel so much more natural.
Ben Yeoh (01:04:15): That is super practical. So if you're going to practice with it and then I think I'm going to extend it, which is if you are going to perform or do anything and the situation going to be different to how you were rehearsing it, try and make the rehearsal bit, whether this is a mic or however it is, rehearse with it so that when you're in your final performance or when you're doing it, you're not going to feel that it's all weird but I will remember that if I have to rehearse with a mic. Well, Bec Hill, thank you very much. Check out her book, I'm holding a copy for those on that that she's written. You can check her out on the web, on Twitter, social media, everywhere. She is fantastic and awesome. Thank you Bec.
Bec Hill (01:04:59): Thanks Ben. Can I call you Ben? I feel like I've just instantly assumed I can give you a short nickname, Ben. You might be like, I am Benjamin and I'm Benjamin.
Ben Yeoh (01:05:08): No, I've always Ben. I think it's only my mom who shouts Benjamin sometimes when she's annoyed with me, which is typical. Does anyone ever call you Rebecca? Like your mom when she's really annoyed with you, that's it right or something?
Bec Hill (01:05:20): Oh, I mean, now it's normally when she's doing fake annoyed and she'll be like, oh Rebecca, it's that sort of fun thing, but I've got friends who will insist occasionally on using the whole-- I mean, I think everyone has a friend who likes to go for the full formal name as for a bit of fun and I quite like calling Matt Parker, Matthew Parker. Feels--
Ben Yeoh (01:05:43):Do you have a comedy middle name?
Bec Hill (01:05:46):My middle name is Natani.
Ben Yeoh (01:05:49):So you'd be Rebecca Natani Hill. So that would be like, get in here Rebecca Natani Hill.
Bec Hill (01:05:53):Yeah, that's it. You get in here? Yeah. What's your middle name? Do you have one?
Ben Yeoh (01:05:58):Yes, I have one. It would be Seng Loong , which kind of means powerful or rising dragon because in Chinese I would be known as Yeoh Seng Loong because you do the family name first and then that way. And so Ben or Benjamin is the other one. So there was some thought that I would be perhaps back in Asia [ ].
Bec Hill (01:06:24): Oh, well, good to know.
Ben Yeoh (01:06:25): And your middle name has Aboriginal roots.
Bec Hill (01:06:32): Yes, it does. You've either done a fantastic research or that was a very good guess and actually what I will say is, I don't know-- See, I was told it had roots, but my parents just didn't know which tribe because obviously there's loads of different dialects in Australia different tribes and they weren't sure which people the word came from, but it's supposedly meant to try. And I started to get quite curious because my mom had always told me that, but I'd never been able to find any proof of it. And so I asked her about it and she said that they'd chosen it from a newspaper article about a guy who had, I don't know, done some sailing thing or something in the eighties and the boat was called the Natani and in the article it said, which is an Aboriginal word, meaning to try and that was what they took it from. But the guy who was sailing was a white guy so I don't know if that's true or the reporter could have just added it. So now I feel quite like, oh, cultural appropriation more so but it was my parents trying to, with good intentions at the time.
Ben Yeoh (01:07:55): Yeah, well, they were very good--
Bec Hill (01:07:56): I have found that it is a real name in other places. I think there's several people with the first name Natani, both male and female from South America who like my Facebook page cause I remember going, "Oh, a Natani, I didn't know that was a name." So maybe it's Aboriginal, maybe it's Spanish or Portuguese or something.
Ben Yeoh (01:08:16): Very good, but it had good intentions which is a good note to end on. So thank you.
Bec Hill (01:08:22): Ah, thanks Ben. Bye.
Ben Yeoh (01:08:26): If you appreciate the show, please like and subscribe as it helps others find the podcast.
