Gráinne Maguire - Motivational Speaker

Being a comedian, you are often asked by well meaning people for things you are completely unsuited for, but you do anyway, because you no longer feel emotions like shame anymore and you get paid. When I was booked to give a 40 minute humorous, motivational speech about mental health at an all-girls private school, I dealt with it the same way I face anything overwhelmingly difficult. I fell into a fugue state of denial until I was actually on the bus to the gig and it was too late to do anything. 

As the bus trundled to that red dot on my google map, looming nearer like the Eye of Sauron, the fine mess I’d got myself into really sharpened in my mind. How could I entertain a hall of teenage girls at 11am in the morning about mental health? Even when I’m depressed, I’m shit at it. When Amy Winehouse was dumped she wrote an iconic album; when I get my heart broken, I write Instagram messages to Taylor Swift about how us girls are in this together. 

I think it’s best to be realistic. The key is not to avoid the crazy, but to make your crazy work for you.

For example, anxiety is nature's remedy to depression. You can't feel depressed when you're so anxious you can feel your skin. If I'm feeling down, I like to arrange two things, on different sides of the city, leave 10 minutes late and trust the anxiety will work like a deliberator. The knowledge that missing one bus connection could end a friendship really focuses the mind and acts like medical grade cocaine. If you meet anyone who boasts about going to three parties a night, they’re not showing off, they are seriously depressed.

The bus pulls up at the school, but this building is nothing like where I spent my teenage years festering. This is more like a very expensive golf club. There are signs directing visitors to the school swimming pool. The students have their own carpark. My tummy flips. The receptionist looks me up and down and directs me to the waiting room outside the head teachers office. I feel like Sandra Bullock floating into outer space. Why haven’t I prepped? What the hell am I going to do? Can I just run away?

How I imagined the students would see me…

I do have an excellent self-care programme but I’m not sure if it works for other people. Most days I wake up motivated and ready to take on the world. I send effort birds tweeting off into the air like a Disney Princess; all my hopes, good wishes and plans for the day circle around my head and soar into the morning sky.

Then life happens, First I check on Instagram and see another birthday party I wasn't invited to,

I go for a run and even though it is my second time running this year, it is STILL HARD. I get another work email about a project that very nearly happened, but not this time and I’ll send a breezy response about how I was so happy to be considered and best of luck with it and...blah blah...shoot me in the head blah...I will definitely watch it when it...blah blah...kill me now...comes out.

About now I’m done. 

And I lie in bed watching YouTube documentaries about what happened to the cast of American 80s sitcoms I never watched in the first place. Full House. Never watched it but I can tell you what the cast are up to now. I want to die. Then everyone will feel sorry for me. Poor    Gráinne they will say, the little girl who died of trying. She efforted herself to death. I feel so frustrated and defeated and doomed and sorry for myself that I can't move. It’s like all the effort sparrows I’ve sent into the world have returned battered, with wires through their wings, eyes falling off. They now hate me, they never asked to be created, they never asked to be born. They return ugly, angry, pecking at my face, squawking - “We’re monsters! We’re monsters!” Then I hear a ping and someone retweeted a joke I made on Twitter and I’m BACK IN THE GAME. That, my dear readers, is my mental health plan.

Who doesn’t want to research what this lot are up to?

I am brought into the hall. It's large and airy, sunlight catching the dust in the air. The sound echoes. A hundred teenage girls in expensive leisure wear sit lazily facing the stage. Too late, a realisation hits me. I was not speaking to a roomful of teenage me’s. These are privileged confident girls in an elite school. I had absolutely nothing in common with them.

“Now as a little treat, we’ve a comedian to talk to you about mental health, welcome to the stage Gráinne Maguire!”

Polite applause dies quickly, followed by confused stares. They look at me like I’ve just asked to borrow five pounds.

I start off with the cleanest, blandest part of my usual comedy set, hoping to win them over, to buy time. Complete silence. I can see all their faces looking at me, confused, then irritated, then pitying, then disdain.

I panic. I talk quicker. Time slows down. My throat dries. I feel like a drunk aunt who has crashed their slumber party and is trying to do a TikTok dance. My mind panics. I have completed my entire suitable comedy act in about 4 minutes.

“So good mental health. Look,” I splutter, “The thing is life... is harder than you think. Some things don't work out...”

I genuinely thought this frankness would endear me to the crowd. Whose this adult telling it like it is? This will win them over. Instead a weird tenseness descends. My heart thumps as I realise my second mistake. These girls have never once been told they won’t succeed, suggesting it’s OK isn't reassuring to them, it’s an insult. It's like I’ve just announced I’ve slept with their dad. I can see their backs stiffen, their faces hardening. But still a voice that is mine, it keeps going, keeps grasping to win them back.

How they actually saw me.

“Life is mainly 9 out of 10 things not working out, you have control over basically none of it and people who do do well, are often the worst people. You keep waiting for them to find out, but they never do and as you get older you panic thinking your options are either bitter but still in the game, or begrudging and out.”

I might as well have said “And that’s why too much protein lowers your sperm count, join me at Speaker’s Corner on Sunday to hear more.” They look at me stunned and I think “Look at them Gráinne. Look at them! They will never know failure, their parents are all Tories FFS.”

And still I keep trying to get them onside. 

“Life is throwing shit at a wall because it’s the only thing you can do, but know that sometimes ….shit doesn’t stick and after all the effort, all you’ve got to show for all your hard work is a hand that smells like shit. And even when you’ve stopped trying, your hand will always taste like shit, reminding you forever of the time you tried.”

I check my watch. I’ve done 12 minutes. I need to fill 28 more minutes. Broken, I croak “Any questions?”

As a quiet act of mercy, a teacher steps in and announces they are having lunch early. “That was very brave” she whispers, walking me swiftly off the premises.

On the bus home I work out, minus agent fees, travel and tax, what I will be paid for what just happened, and then I spend as much of that as possible on snacks from Marks and Spencer at the trains station. Because if there is one mental health lesson I have learnt, it’s the importance of self care.

Things that have annoyed me this week: UNFRIENDLY COFFEE SHOPS

I absolutely love coffee shops. Tearooms, coffee houses, museum cafes, are all safe places for me. If I’m ever on death row I want my last meal to be the type of fancy deli lunch your dad buys you after you’ve just seen the Parthenon Marbles. Quiche, potato salad, Bakewell tart, cappuccino and then the sweet embrace of death for a crime I didn't commit.

That is why I feel such rage about cafes that take all the fun out of a place that is at its best, somewhere granny’s take their grandkids for behaving themselves in Tesco. If that is the benchmark, the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club of café standards, why are so many coffee shops so smug about how boring they are? 

The drabness of, to use that tedious term “hipster” cafes - everyone is working, tapping away on MacBooks, always MacBooks, aimed at lost souls who like their coffee under exam conditions. Don't treat me like I’ve accidentally stumbled into your WeWork and want to use your plug socket. There are steel mills in 19th century Yorkshire with better vibes. There’s no cake. Just flapjacks that have seen things. You are only allowed newspapers that are broadsheets, books that have won awards and graphic novels that are about the Holocaust. 

The noticeboard is yoga, Pilates, food therapy, your syllabus for what you need to do next.

They don’t even trust you to use the toilet. You either drag a key attached to a tire, or memorise a 6-digit code that will spontaneously combust in six seconds. They are filled with loud, shrieking children playing with wooden toys ironically. 

The staff are tired because they’re not just serving you your coffee, they are gentrifying the area. You always feel like you’re interrupting the barista from inventing a new take on the midriff. Their vibe is a bored model on a photoshoot or trust fund kid working for one day because it’s the requirement in a will set by an eccentric wealthy relative.

Of all the things in lockdown I missed most, it was the moment’s pause that a mid-morning coffee and pastry brings, that I most look forward to winning back. So hear me now, as god is my witness, when this is over, if I ever find myself sitting alone at a table and suddenly find myself in the middle of an accounting meeting because some team thinks the empty chairs around me is their free office space, I’d either better be paid a consultancy fee or you better be fine helping me with my tax return.