The last time he’d been to Glastonbury, he smoked some weed his son was passing round, the first he’d smoked for years and been subsequently enveloped in shrouds of sleepy melancholy all weekend.

His tent leaked, the old faithful canvass had seen many conquests of women who now ran the BBC but wouldn’t give him a show. He’d always relied on a body of contemporary mates, The Desperate Brothers, Duncan Disorganised and Annie Doolittle, the whole lower half of the 80s Alternative comedy bill basically.

He’d turn up in the illicit all night bar run by a mate in Circus Field Camping after all the shows were done and someone would buy him a drink.

This year, none of them seemed to be there, it was all young people. He’d had to spend more of his own money than he had planned for and now had nothing left but a fiver and some loose change.

His body felt tired from all the trudging in mud and his show, at two pm in the comedy tent, had, sadly, taken place in this year’s one brief three hour period when it wasn’t raining. His hoped for wet weather bonus of a packed house of shelterers, was replaced by 12 students, sleeping or on their phones and nobody, least of all him was listening to what he was saying.

He’d been to the Circus Green Room and danced to Ranking Roger’s Beat in a desperate attempt to show himself as a free spirit who didn’t need company but then his back started to hurt. “If there’s a smile on my face it’s only there trying to fool the public” sang Roger as he left. Everyone’s an ironic, observational comedian these days he thought.

he’d been woken three hours later at 6am, by a desperate need for a piss and had rushed out his tent only behold the hideous sight of Octogenarian Actor, Dudley Sutton, Tinker Dill out of Lovejoy, stark bollock naked in front of his own tent in the gathering dawn.

At this point he realised he was stark bollock naked too.

“Morning!” said Dudley Sutton cheerily as the both relieved themselves onto opposing pieces of mud. He scowled back and wondered why the old fool still bothered.

That could have been another funny sketch but he was too miserable to notice it.

And now, a few years later Dudley Sutton was dead and Ranking Roger had cancer.

And he had given up comedy because he actually didn’t find anything funny anymore.

He’d moved house, sold his flat in London, moved back to Cardiff, with the mortgage paid off and now worked in a nice Wellfield Rd café, where no one knew he’d once been a comedian on the telly, apart from a very rare, “Didn’t you used to be”.

He was happier than he’d been in years! For unlike Dudley Sutton who lived his whole life inside showbiz and was always bound to die there. He’d taken up comedy to waste time one summer and it had become a job like any other.

And now it was time to do something else.