Rob Beckett’s easy charm and eye for a cracking joke have made him one of Britain’s most popular standups. But behind his infectious humour, he’s had to deal with dark thoughts and confront his own anxieties

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”.