Nathan Lang is from Melbourne. He used to appear in the Australian TV soap Neighbours. But I know him from the London stand-up comedy circuit.
I got an email from him:
“For better or worse, I’m back in the UK. Yes I managed to have a baby in Perth and survive the existential breakdown that comes with living in the most isolated city in the world and now I’m back.
“I’m running a Comedy Cabaret in aid of Hackney Winter Night Shelter again this year on Tuesday 3rd December. The line up is fantastic. Last year we sold out and raised much more money than expected, it’s a really wonderful night deep in the heart of artsy Hackney Wick.
“It’s not stand-up. The line-up a beautiful, colourful, lighthearted, crazy, unique acts that don’t do stand-up.”
So we had a chat. About two weeks ago.
And I have only just transcribed it.
I got severely side-tracked.
The charity cabaret is tomorrow. Mea Culpa. But, as with many of my blogs, we went way-off subject anyway…
Nathan, baby Chilli and Shelley Lang in Australia
NATHAN: My wife Shelley and I went to Perth on 25th November 2018 to have a baby. Shelley’s family live there. They emigrated from Scotland.
JOHN: I remember I was terribly impressed by your wife when I met her ages ago. Perhaps because she’s Scottish.
NATHAN: Because she’s Scottish, she is a radiant beauty and just the most exhilarating person. That’s definitely what impresses me about her.
JOHN: How long were you back in Australia?
NATHAN: Eight months. We came back on the 9th September 2019. Our daughter is ten months old now.
JOHN: Shelley must have been well-progressed in pregnancy when you got there.
NATHAN: We just scraped in. We really needed the family support and the health care in Australia is really amazing.
JOHN: And the comedy?
NATHAN: The comedy scene in Perth is stand-up. A very small scene, but the standard is really high. The quality really pushed me to improve quite a lot. It’s similar to a Brighton crowd. They go out; they want to have a really good evening of laughs. Great audiences and one pro comedy club. Just stand-up. It’s stand-up or cabaret there and their version of cabaret is really highly-skilled circus acts who take their clothes off.
JOHN: I want to go there.
NATHAN: Then it’s probably worth that 30-hour journey.
JOHN: Australia is a faraway place.
NATHAN: And Perth is the most isolated city in the world and it feels like it too.
JOHN: So what are you doing on 4th December, the day after your Hackney charity gig?
NATHAN: That’s my day with chilli.
JOHN: With what?
NATHAN: That’s my day with Chilli – my daughter – Her name is Chilli Bobcat.
JOHN: She’s going to get hell in school with those names.
NATHAN: I was going to call her Strawberry until a friend said: “Remember she’ll go to school one day.”
JOHN: So Bobcat is better?
NATHAN: My middle name is Luke.
JOHN: Biblical?
NATHAN: No, my father used to work for a company that distributed cutlery and our cutlery drawer was full of knives and forks that had ‘Luke’ printed on them… I am named after kitchen cutlery.
JOHN: But, basically, you think Bobcat is a more feminine name than Strawberry?
NATHAN: No, Strawberry was going to be her first name but Shelley came up with the brilliant idea of calling her Chilli – after the pepper – which is a cool name.
JOHN: So why Bobcat…?
NATHAN: On Christmas Day, Shelley and I were sober. She was heavily pregnant. Her Scottish family, obviously, were steaming and we said they could choose a middle name. We had not told them whether it was going to be a boy or girl, so they chose a unisex middle name – Bobbie. But then, knowing her first name, we obviously couldn’t call her Chilli Bobbie.
JOHN: Why?
NATHAN: The rhythm of that and the two double consonants…
JOHN: So Chilli Bobcat is better than Chilli Bobbie?
NATHAN: We squeezed Cat in because my grandmother’s name was Kathleen.
JOHN: Just to recap… You had thought Strawberry was a good name…
NATHAN: Just for a while… Do you know it’s illegal to call your kid ‘Strawberry’ – ‘Fraise’ – in France?
This would be illegal in France if a child (Photo: Irene Kredenets via UnSplash)
JOHN: Why?
NATHAN: Bullying. There is a list of names you cannot call your kid in France – ‘Hitler’ is one of them.
JOHN: Strawberry is on a level with Hitler in France?
NATHAN: It’s child protection. Social Services. For the welfare of the child. They care about their children’s future in France.
JOHN: They don’t want a future generation of fruits?
NATHAN: Who knows. But Chilli Bobcat Lang: it has a nice ring to it.
JOHN: I think the surname lets it down. It’s a bit ordinary after Chilli Bobcat.
NATHAN: She might just call herself CB. Or she might go by a symbol like Prince did for a while. It might be her first squiggle on a piece of paper. Or she might change her name from Bobcat. She might prefer Caracal.
JOHN: Caracal?
NATHAN: It’s a type of cat that lives in the savannah desert. They jump really high and catch birds in mid-air.
JOHN: Anyway, so what ARE you doing after the Hackney charity gig?
NATHAN: I’m always pursuing my acting career.
JOHN: You seem happy.
NATHAN: It’s the anti-depressants.
JOHN: You’re on them?
Nathan Lang at St Pancras station, London
NATHAN: Yeah. You have obviously never lived in Perth.
After my daughter was born, I had a psychological breakdown and was put on very strong anti-depressants immediately and entered into depth psychotherapy – analytic psychotherapy – which was well overdue.
JOHN: Because of Perth?
NATHAN: Well, I can’t blame Perth any more than I can blame my parents, really.
JOHN: Why was it long overdue?
NATHAN: It’s not like I had a psychosis or anything. I had a very sudden intensification of what turned out to be a pre-existing condition of depression and anxiety that I had been living with for so many years I just thought it was normal.
But, after speaking to a GP and a therapist, I was led quite quickly to realise it’s not normal to wake up every day under a huge weight, a huge pressure of knowing that everything you do all day is never going to be good enough and you are going to punish yourself for everything at the end of the day as you run through every single thing you’ve said and done in your mind or just drink yourself to sleep.
It’s not normal to exist in every waking – and sleeping – moment in a state of constant self-loathing and believing you’re a worthless piece of shit… unless you are a comedian, in which case of course (LAUGHS) it IS normal.
So… yes… anti-depressants are wonderful… I feel like I got myself back… and I got my joy back.
JOHN: And you are OK now?
NATHAN: I’m able to be an engaged and joyful father. I was really, really worried about what Chilli would absorb. And it was so hard on Shelley. The first few months of being a new mother AND having me falling apart was… I tried my best to hold together but your most intimates see what’s happening.
JOHN: Men are not supposed to get post-natal depression.
NATHAN: Well, they do, though I have never met one who will admit he has. But I don’t think that’s what I had. It was not a sudden, acute affliction. It was just the exacerbation of a feeling that I was already quite familiar with.
JOHN: I guess women get post-natal depression because they suddenly realise the full enormity of what they’ve let themselves in for.
NATHAN: I heard some interviews with British women who suffered postpartum psychosis and they were sectioned immediately after their children were born and those stories were horrendous.
JOHN: Why did you come back to the UK?
NATHAN: Our careers.
JOHN: What is Shelley?
NATHAN: A trainee psychotherapist.
JOHN: That’s useful.
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 