‘You’re kind of squabbling’: The work-life balance when mum and dad are comedians

UK comedian Sara Pascoe is setting a high bar for her sons’ career expectations – the lesson they’re learning is that work means friendly folk in theatres offering delicious treats.

“We try to take them with us, because there is an element of our work kind of interfering with our lives, of shaping our home life,” the 43-year-old mother-of-two says.

Sara Pascoe became a mum at the age of 40 – it’s given her a wealth of new material.Credit: Alexandra Cameron 

“With the tech runs in the afternoon, that’s when they just need to run amok anyway; it’s sort of like a brand-new space for them to do that.

“I found that people working in venues are very tolerant, and my son gets very excited because sometimes people have big bowls of crisps and sweets.”

But the point of it all is not lost on her elder child.

“So he knows that work is for money, and he knows that he needs money for toys … he’s quite happy with me going to work next time we’re in a supermarket and we see the toys.”

Pascoe is in Australia with her Sydney-born comedian husband Steen Raskopoulos and their boys, aged three and 17 months.

It’s not their first visit – Pascoe’s father lives in Adelaide with his Australian wife, and Raskopoulos’ family is in Sydney, so there are grandparents and cousins to catch up with, and they’ve made the trip a few times in the boys’ young lives. But this time mum and dad are both working – performing in Melbourne before they head to the Sydney Comedy Festival.

Sara Pascoe starred in her self-penned sitcom Out of Her Mind.Credit: Jack Barnes/Stolen Picture/Sony Pictures Television

They’re a busy pair. Raskopoulos – who stars in the Australian version of The Office – has built a huge cult following with his award-winning solo stage work as well as improvised Bear Pack shows with Thank God You’re Here regular Carlo Ritchie, which they are performing as part of the Sydney Comedy Festival.

Meanwhile, Pascoe is an author, a regular on TV and radio panel shows in the UK, has also starred in and written sitcoms and can be seen in Prime’s recently released Last One Laughing UK.

How do they juggle it all?

“The diary is the most precious thing in the world, and you’re kind of squabbling over time, and whoever gets there first – doesn’t matter what the thing pays or how big it is, you know – they have first dibs,” Pascoe says.

“We both have suffered a couple of times with disappointment, but you just have to sort of take a big deep breath and go, ‘This is what every single parent in the world is doing’.”

Pascoe had no plans for marriage before crossing paths with Raskopoulos. She was on a post-break-up dating hiatus when they met at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in 2015, although they did not get together until he moved to London a few years later.

Steen Raskopoulos, left, with his Bear Pack collaborator Carlo Ritchie.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Then came their 2020 wedding and IVF – amid the turbulence of the COVID pandemic – that produced two children.

Little wonder Pascoe’s show I Am a Strange Gloop, at the Enmore Theatre on Saturday, reflects on her life journey over the past few years.

“When I was having to think of a title for the show, I was thinking a lot about where ‘myself’ was because I had just been completely destroyed by three years of sleeplessness and other people’s bodily fluids,” Pascoe says.

It is also riffing on US cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter’s 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop, which examines the sense of self.

Her interest in sex and evolutionary biology formed during high school psychology classes, then fully blossomed when she gave up her day job to try comedy almost 20 years ago and realised she had a lot of time on her hands.

“And I remember thinking, number one, use your time well, and number two, have interesting things to talk about on stage. It’s very easy with stand-up to slip into those two-dimensional views of things … researching into evolution and things, I just felt like it kept me interested and interested a lot of my audience as well,” Pascoe says.

That interest spawned two books about those subjects: Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body (2016) and Sex Power Money (2019).

Her 2023 novel Weirdo and 2020 sitcom Out of Her Mind, which she wrote and starred in, canvassed similar issues, but she may be a little bit ahead of her audience with the title of her new show – nobody gets the Hofstadter reference.

“Now I’m gonna have to start putting out reading lists before I tour,” she says.

Sara Pascoe performs I Am a Strange Gloop at the Sydney Comedy Festival on April 26.