Andy Parsons: The secret I discovered on a 20-year pub crawl

In some ways, a comedy tour resembles a giant pub crawl masquerading as a job. When I was deciding how to pay the bills in my early twenties, there was something very appealing about a job that allowed you to get up whenever you liked, turn up to a club in the evening to do 20 minutes’ work and then be offered free drinks afterwards. And in many ways, that’s still what I do, it’s just that the 20 minutes has become two hours, and the clubs have become theatres and the free drinks are usually still available but only for half an hour after the show ends, at which point you’re politely asked to leave the dressing room as they are closing the building. A lot of the theatres I play round the country were built in Victorian times and there is always a little pub round the corner where it’s poss