Benji Waterstones: You Don't Have to Be Mad to Work Here ★★★★

It’s not often a comedy show opens with the audience being told that society doesn’t take mental health as seriously as physical health. Yet then again Benji Waterstones is not your usual comedian. He is also a consultant psychiatrist whose show – You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here – draws on his own professional experience to provide “a fly-on-the-padded-wall” account that goes where conversations about mental health rarely do.

Effectively using visuals to enhance his accomplished storytelling, Waterstones is able to extract gently hilarious humour from the anonymised tales of his work on the psychiatric ward of a major hospital. These include him being summoned to A&E to assess an overly euphoric patient who has arranged her wedding to a high profile celebrity she has never met, and won’t let the fact they already have a partner stand in her way. And his drawing upon logic, as opposed to force, to pacify a violently schizophrenic patient who believes they are a werewolf.

Insight is also provided about the preconceptions psychiatrists have to deal with, such as frequently being asked as to what the secret of happiness is, as if this could be met with an easy answer. The show does have its darker, more contemplative moments, however. Like all psychiatrists, Waterstones is required to undergo therapy himself, and during such sessions – which are hilariously portrayed – he starts to contemplate his own state of mind and the impact his family and upbringing may have had on his personality. Waterstones act does not hide from the challenges faced by his profession, either. Identifying the years of cuts mental health care has been exposed to in the UK, he recounts the moment he horrifyingly suspects a delay in progressing treatment for a patient may have had disastrous consequences.

With a disarming delivery and a real sense of warmth in his material Waterstones provides a highly entertaining and unique hour of comedy. Yet it is equally thought provoking, dealing head on with healthy issues we frequently choose to ignore. Certainly though, You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here proves the old adage that laughter is frequently the best medicine.