Irish comedian Mary Bourke on eking out humour from being a carer for her husband

Irish Examiner

4 hours ago

Mary Bourke is an Irish comedian living in London. In 2020, during a covid pandemic lockdown, her husband Simon Clayton, also a comedian, suffered a massive stroke. It propelled Bourke into becoming his carer. Her life changed in a million ways from that moment. One of the things she noticed was the need to manage people's emotions around her, what she describes as 'emotional labour'.
'Everybody wants a happy story,' she says on stage. 'No one necessarily wants the truth. I'll be at a party. A comedian will come up to me. He'll be very nervous because he realises that he's on the cusp of a tricky conversation.
"And English people would sooner disembowel themselves like Samurai than have a tricky conversation. So they'll come up to me with panic blazing in their little English eyes, and they'll say, 'Mary, how's Simon doing?' And I'll say, 'He's paralysed and in a wheelchair.' And they'll go, 'Oh, my God, that's terrible.' And I'll say, 'Yes, but at least I got a show out of it.' '
Not only has Bourke managed to generate stand-up routines, but she's also created a five-part BBC radio documentary series, entitled Mary Bourke: Who Cares?, about her situation and the plight of carers in the UK, and worldwide. They are a sizable, silent constituency. A 2019 Central Statistics Office survey estimated that one in eight people aged 15 or older in Ireland work as family carers, which tallies with British-based research cited in Bourke's documentary.
In her documentary, Bourke talks about her own experiences and those of fellow comics working as carers. These include Pope Lonergan, author of a memoir, I'll Die After Bingo, about his decade working in an elderly care facility; Imran Yusuf, an Edinburgh Comedy Awards nominee, who cared for his mother after she had a stroke; and Michael Akadiri, who works for the NHS as a junior doctor.
'It's a subject nobody talks about,' says Bourke. 'I realised I knew lots of comedians who are also carers but in different capacities. Some are carers for autistic children, some for their parents with dementia. I thought it'd be lovely if we could do some stand-up about the experience of being carers, and I could interview them as well, and for people who are carers to hear other people talking about their circumstances.
'There are a lot of brave, forgotten people out there who get ignored. There's a silent army of people completely forgotten by the government. They should be recognised. One of the contributors says, 'If the government knew how much money we were saving them, you'd think they'd treat us a bit better.' That stayed with me. She's right."
Simon Clayton, husband of Mary Bourke.
Bourke says that when she became a carer, there wasn't much discussion out there. "Most of what I came across is very depressing. It's good to find the humour in it. Laughing is the way you deal with everything in life. If you talk to doctors or police, that's how they deal with their situations. They laugh at it. It's a way of dealing with things and putting them in perspective.'
The episodes in the series are short, each less than a quarter of an hour, which makes them easily digestible, and they're leavened with painfully funny anecdotes and gags. The comedian Josephine Lacey is the mother of a severely autistic child, who she had to teach how to masturbate. The punchline of her story about how she persuaded him not to take out his penis in a supermarket is a show stopper.
'The laugh that joke got on stage took the roof off,' says Bourke. 'I'd seen the routine already. I knew it was coming, but it was still absolute joy. Her show, Autism Mama, is amazing because it's about sexuality and autistic teenage boys, a taboo subject people never want to talk about. No one wants to go near it. She does it with such sensitivity and humour. I remember the night I was at her show, a load of parents with autistic children were in, and they all queued up to chat to her and thank her for doing the show. It's a way of letting people into a world.'
Humour was the tool that managed to first snap Clayton out of his stroke-induced coma. Bourke was bedside with her husband in ICU, a couple of weeks after his stroke, when an obnoxious doctor came by doing his rounds, trailing an entourage of medical students. The doctor stood at the end of the bed and intoned, 'Ms Bourke, any questions?'
She looked at her husband with his broken body laid out on the bed and she said gravely: 'Mr Cudworth, please be honest with me. Do you think 9/11 was an inside job?'
There was a giggling noise, and Bourke looked down at her husband smiling. The doctor lunged forward and he grabbed her husband's hand and he started shouting, 'Simon! Simon! Listen to me, listen to me! If you found that joke funny, squeeze my hand.' And her husband squeezed his hand tightly.
Then the doctor stood up straight and said to his students, 'The ability to process a joke is one of the highest levels of cognitive function because the brain not only has to recognise cognitive dissonance but respond in a very particular, specific way. This interaction gives me a great deal of hope and optimism for the future.' Bourke reckons it was his roundabout way of saying she was funny.
For 18 months, Bourke's lovely, kind husband became an 'antichrist', but thankfully his regular bubbly, stoic personality has returned. He lives in a care home, as he requires 24/7 nursing care. His sense of humour hasn't left him.
When he recovered, he found the sight of doctors wearing Crocs with socks particularly grating so he took to wearing a badge: 'Q: Why do Crocs have holes in them? A: To let the shame out.'
Humour has always run in the Bourke family. She grew up in Terenure, Dublin. Her paternal grandmother lived outside Ballina, Co Mayo for more than a hundred years. She was interviewed on Raidió na Gaeltachta and asked what was the secret to her longevity? Was it due to a good diet or exercise? Her grandmother leaned into the mic and said: 'I have lived to 103 because God is punishing me.'
Mary Bourke: Who Cares? is available online via BBC Sounds
What's in a word?
It's said that when people get dementia a part of the person's personality comes to the forefront. The sufferer from dementia might become more docile and seemingly spaced out, or, alternatively, he or she may become more agitated and aggressive. If the person veers towards the latter, there is a lexicon of neutral terms that can be used to describe that person's behaviour.
'My mum has always been difficult,' says Susan Murray, a comedian who cares for her mother with dementia. 'Now she's 'challenging'. There's a lot of euphemisms for the dementia crowd, isn't there? ' 'Lively' – 'punches nurses'; 'a joiner in' – 'gets into other people's beds'; 'bit of a character' – 'Hannibal Lecter in a frock'.'