‘All comedians are broken’: Rob Beckett on dyslexia, family bonds and what drives him

Towards the end of 2019, the comedian Rob Beckett called his wife, and then his agent, to tell them he was struggling to cope. He had travelled to South Africa to film the second series of the Bafta award-winning show Rob & Romesh Vs, which follows attempts by him and fellow funnyman Romesh Ranganathan to learn new skills. (Previous episodes include: modelling with David Gandy, country music with Shania Twain, boxing with Anthony Joshua.) This time they were playing cricket with Kevin Pietersen and going on safari. Beckett was aware of his privilege – that the trip should have been a breeze. But, as he tells me over lunch in a bustling, high-end London restaurant, he was heading towards burnout. “The job was basically a lads’ trip, getting pissed with one of my best mates,” he says. “And I was like, ‘Well, if this doesn’t make me happy…’”

Beckett, who is 38, had a happy, lively childhood in working-class southeast London. He lived with his parents and two of his four brothers, who mocked and teased each other relentlessly. (His mum, known as “Big Suze”, has jokingly described the family home as the House of No Compassion. “I was called Jaffa Cake Nips because I had fat nipples through puberty,” Beckett has said.) Money was tight and he found school extremely difficult, leaving education with a chronic lack of self-worth and little idea of what to do next. When comedy called, he launched himself into it, saying yes to every opportunity in case it was his last, repurposing his insecurity into ammunition. “It was a toxic fuel,” he says. “Effective, like chucking petrol on a bonfire, but unsustainable.” He soon became a fixture on our screens: as presenter on the ITV2 spin-off show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! Now!, as a team captain on 8 Out of 10 Cats, a contestant on Taskmaster, the narrator on Celebs Go Dating. By 2019, he had become a well-known personality who was happily married with two young daughters. Yet fear and panic possessed him. “I had all the markers of a successful person,” he says, “but I was having suicidal thoughts.” He adds quickly that he didn’t attempt to act on them. Instead, on his agent’s recommendation, he underwent six months of intense sessions with a therapist. Then Covid hit, forcing him to stop and reflect on “what was basically a low-level anxiety disorder, poverty mindset and impostor syndrome”.

Despite our grand surroundings today – art-deco features, plush banquette seating – Beckett is warm and unpretentious. He speaks openly and quickly in chipper estuary English about this challenging period, delivering his theory that “all comedians are broken… there’s got to be something wrong that drives us to achieve” with the same dynamism as the story – or lack of – behind the title of his forthcoming tour, Giraffe. (The tour’s artwork features Beckett’s head attached to an artificially elongated mammalian neck against a yellow background. In a full-body version of the same image he also has hooves, at the request of his children.) “I thought it’d be funny,” he says of him as a giraffe. Of the tour, he continues: “You’ll come to the show, laugh, then leave. There’s no big message.”

Beckett’s standup routine is packed with jokes drawn from everyday minutiae: driving, ageing parents, puberty. “I don’t get how comics write about these mad hot topics. I write whatever makes me laugh, basically.” It’s clear he’s grappled with the heady mix of heightened ego and low self-esteem that often befalls his peers. “Comedians aren’t as important or influential as we like to think. We’re a Chinese takeaway, a pint at the pub, a distraction from life.”

For Beckett, the stakes for this tour feel lower than his last, in 2021. Back then he “worried about it going wrong, because of catastrophic thinking”. His entire wellbeing was dependent on whether he felt funny enough – he constantly compared his act to others. “I’d either be king of the world or a piece of shit. My head would go: ‘Kevin Bridges is better than that.’” With his therapist, he developed coping strategies inspired by Echkart Tolle, Alan Watts and the teachings of stoicism. Now, he has a calm, unencumbered approach to work. “I’m a funny person with funny jokes. I’ll go out there, tell them and not try to control the outcome.” His priority lies in arriving at each show “happy and healthy, just trying my best” and separating himself from the audience’s reaction. “If it goes brilliantly, it’s not because I’m amazing, it’s just that particular gig went well.”

When we speak, he’s in the middle of a string of modest “work-in-progress” shows to practise new material. The previous night he performed in a small coastal town to a crowd that was older than he’s used to. He takes out his phone and, chuckling, shows me a short clip of the front row, which is mainly pensioners. “They were lovely, but I’ve got a routine about getting pubes late and a lady said ‘DisGUSting’ out loud, which really made me laugh.” A comment like that might previously have ruined his evening, but now he’s determined to embrace each and every moment: “If it’s awkward, enjoy the awkwardness!” Working towards letting go, he reckons, has improved the show, “because there’s this relaxed person that’s enjoying themselves, rather than someone thinking, ‘If I’m not funny I’m going to lose everything.’”

For most comedians, rehearsal usually involves meticulous memorising, but Beckett’s method is intentionally laissez-faire. “I’ve never been one for a big story-arc. My idea of the perfect gig is that I’ve prepared my jokes, but I go on and don’t need any of it. It’s almost impossible to do that for 90 minutes, but the ultimate dream is going on with something entirely new.” Connection with his audience is more important than a pitch-perfect monologue. “I pick and choose when it’s appropriate to include a routine. I like the freedom of it feeling like a laugh with your friends.”

From his backpack he pulls out a plastic folder containing a notepad page covered in short bullet points of indecipherable writing. It looks like someone’s shopping list, or a doctor’s prescription pad. I’m unnerved to learn that this is the sum total of his tour notes. Noticing my alarm, he explains that, for him, writing it all down is pointless.

On a recent episode of Parenting Hell, the hit podcast he presents with Josh Widdicombe that explores “the trials and tribulations of modern-day parenting”, Beckett spoke about his late diagnosis of dyslexia. The signs were always there, he says, but he was compelled to see a private consultant after realising he was hindering, not helping, his daughter with her homework. In his retelling, the three-hour assessment over video call, with a woman who reminded him of a teacher, was mentally and emotionally taxing. Memories of his exhausting, bewildering school-years flooded back: he became sweaty, agitated – then burst into tears. His reasoning for this refers back to an Eckhart Tolle concept that we carry emotional pain in our physical body. On the podcast episode, he explained to Widdicombe that being asked questions about his past opened a “pain-body memory I hadn’t accessed, that I had chosen to stay away from”. During the conversation he disclosed an almost total absence of short-term memory when writing down sequences of numbers and letters and that he has to visualise where he’s last seen a word to know how it’s spelled. The assessor confirmed the diagnosis – and he broke down once more.

Beckett’s recounting to Widdicombe is up-tempo and without self-pity. Still, listening to his revelation that the education system isn’t designed for children like him is incredibly touching. “I was told I was thick and that I wasn’t trying, but I was trying 10 times harder than the others in the class,” he says now. (Because he has naturally funny bones, you can’t help but laugh along with the duo when Beckett likens his convulsing sobs to “taking ayahuasca”.) The whole exchange typifies the podcast, which consistently rides high in the listening charts and has spawned a Sunday Times bestseller book and a nationwide arena tour. The pair excel at exploring the sublime to the ridiculous aspects of parenting: the school run, eating habits, existential despair when the car keys are accidentally microwaved (Beckett); your two small children insist on sleeping in your bedroom (Widdicombe). It’s poignant and tender, consistently joyful.

In Beckett’s memoir, A Class Act, he recalls his mum and dad once being told by his teacher that he would never be a high achiever. Beckett was four at the time. Why wasn’t his dyslexia picked up sooner? “My brother got diagnosed when he was young, because of more obvious problems with his spelling and reading,” he says, “but because my main issue is retaining information it was harder to spot.” Like other members of his family, his dad, “Super Dave”, who “left school at 13 with cane marks on his arse to drive a van”, is undiagnosed but almost definitely has dyslexia, too.

A charming story in Beckett’s memoir describes his mum buying Dave (who worked as a cabbie at the time) his first book – The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 133/4 – at the age of 43. Because the chapters were short, he was able to read them in the taxi rank between fares; now, he reads all the time. The memoir, as the title suggests, explores “life as a working-class man in a middle-class world”. Did being working class contribute to them not being diagnosed? “Class always boils down to money,” Beckett says. “School didn’t pick it up and there just wasn’t the opportunity, or the time, to go private.”

In the years leading to his diagnosis, Beckett relied on his canniness and natural charisma. “I worked out where I could bring value wherever I was. When I worked in an office, I couldn’t really do the admin, but I was good with people, so I’d focus on that. I created an entire life for myself where I didn’t need the things that dyslexia makes harder for you.” Since his diagnosis, he has a deeper understanding of himself. “It’s the equivalent of having Ikea furniture and someone giving you an allen key and instructions. Knowledge is power, essentially.”

He knows his needs at work (script meetings are necessary, but he finds reading through them in a group mentally draining) and that his strength lies in getting on with it on the studio floor. “If you said, ‘Go and host a TV show’ I’d rather do it straight away, and I’d probably be better for it. It’s like being asked to do a handstand for half an hour then lift weights and you’re like, ‘My arms are gone!’” His scrappy tour notes, in this context, make perfect sense. “My ideas are in here,” he says, pointing to his head, “but by the time I work out how to get my ideas down there…” he points to the page. “It’s all gone.”

Beckett’s latest tour is a mammoth one. Due to high demand, there are multiple consecutive dates in most of the theatres he’s playing in. He could have opted for fewer shows in larger venues, but he wanted to give people a proper night out in a beautiful room. Affinity with his audience is a key factor. “I can be there for two or three nights, really enjoy it and be present, as opposed to ‘Right that’s done, next one.’” Arenas, he says, can feel “like a hamster wheel, so it’ll be cathartic to go to these places in a measured way.”

The shows wrap up in 2026, then “I’d like to have a break and do a lot less. I’m already tapering down, so Lou can do more.” Lou is Beckett’s wife, Louise Watts, a secondary-school history teacher who stepped back from her career to raise their daughters. She’s known to the loyal listenership of Parenting Hell through Beckett’s lighthearted yarns from their family life, as a popular guest on the podcast itself, and for contributing a chapter to their book (she also has a blog about motherhood). Now the children are eight and six, she’s gearing up for a return to the workforce. Could they be the next TV power-couple? Beckett is tight-lipped. “We’ve had offers, but Lou’s so talented I feel it’s something she doesn’t need me for. I’m not ruling it out, but at the moment it’s hard.” He grins. “Anyway, we’d have to get a babysitter then! Also, I’d quite like her to crack on so I can retire. I’d be happy to do nothing except play video games.”

It’s difficult to imagine Beckett doing less. By his own admission, “I’ve got 100 ideas at once. I got made redundant from office jobs so many times I always make sure I’ve got other things on the go.” He plans to stream himself playing a new gaming PC, and he’d like to continue the podcast until Widdicombe’s youngest child – who is now three – goes to university. “Then we’ll start it again when we’ve got grandkids.” Mainly, he wants to be present for himself and his family. “It sounds wanky, but I go to bed every night and ask myself, ‘Did I enjoy today, yes or no?’ If I didn’t, I’ll try to change the things I don’t like. I don’t look beyond that, because you never know how it’s going to work out. If you have too much of an idea of who you are and where you want to go, it limits you. At the moment, I’m sort of floating along.”

Rob Beckett’s tour, Giraffe, resumes next month, for tickets and dates, see ticketmaster.co.uk; his podcast, Parenting Hell, is available wherever you get your podcasts.

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this interview, please contact mind.org.uk

Fashion editor Helen Seamons; grooming by Olivia Davey using Bobbi bBrown and Chanel; fashion assistant Sam Deaman; shot at Lordship Park Locations