Garrett Millerick

Comedian Garrett Millerick is known for his sharp wit, unfiltered observations, and a knack for turning life’s everyday absurdities into brilliantly crafted stand-up. You may know him as the creator and star of Radio 4’s “Do Gooders”. With a career spanning stand-up, radio, and TV writing, he’s built a reputation for delivering laughs wrapped in biting social commentary. His latest special, Just Trying To Help, is a hilariously exasperated attempt to make sense of the world—an increasingly chaotic place where good intentions often lead to unintended consequences. We caught up with Garrett to talk about his influences, his creative process, and why his mum might regret giving him that Ben Elton cassette all those years ago…

Hello Garrett, can you introduce yourself to our readers?

I’m a middle-aged divorcee on the backslide of life attempting to make jokes to disguise my sense of unease. I also have a dog.

Who was the first comedian you saw that made you think, “That’s what I want to do”?

I don’t remember thinking ‘that’s what I want to do’, I’m just not good at anything else. And this seemed like a reasonable way of making good account of my failings. 

My mum bought me a cassette of Ben Elton doing stand up for Christmas one year, I think I was about nine. Given the content of a lot of the show, it was a questionable parenting decision. And as it led to me doing this for a living and not pursuing a career in law as she had hoped, I think the whole thing was a disastrous parenting decision. 

I got into comedy at a very young age, and had been a fan of sitcoms and sketch shows. That was really my first introduction to stand up. The guy who wrote Blackadder was just on a stage by himself telling jokes. Quite a revelation. So that was my gateway drug really. Ben Elton doesn’t get enough credit generally for the impact he’s had on British comedy. It was very fashionable for a long time to knock him. Which I’ve never really understood. He’s the closest thing British Comedy has to Paul McCartney.

Just Trying To Help is described as a ‘cathartic appeal for calm’—delivered by someone who’s not exactly calm. How would you describe the show in your own words?

Well, not to split hairs, but those are my words. I wrote them in some notes for a press release for the original run of the show, and I guess they summed the whole thing up quite effectively because they were adopted in a few reviews. 

The central theme of the show is the unintended consequences of trying to do your best. I tend to think that most people have good intentions. There are outliers, but I think 99.9% of people are trying to help. And yet, with the best of intentions calamity often ensues. But we’re trapped in a sort of conspiracy theory mindset. Where a lot of the time we think the reason bad things happen are because there was some grand plan of malign intent. Conspiracy theorists are actually incredibly positive people, because they believe that all the ills of the world could be solved if we just tore down the curtain and exposed the bad actors. It’s a lot more depressing to realise that the state of the world is down to a lot of people doing their best but bumping into each other and the cruel hand of fate.

This show originally debuted in 2022, but you’ve said it feels more relevant now than ever. Why do you think that is?

The life of the show ended up spanning four years. I started sketching out ideas for it just before the pandemic. When trying to write something funny, you take a stupid idea and try and wring as much out of it as you possibly can towards an absurd conclusion. So, I was trying to make a case for a new religious order in a secular society.

And in the early stages of developing the ideas, tech billionaires as Gods, grave warnings from history about the devices that rule our lives, and the animated violence of how we interact online being akin to pub brawls… that all felt quite ridiculous and cartoony. But the world has sort of caught up with the cartoon and here we are. The things that were bothering me in an abstract way a few years ago have become a mainstream narrative. Which wasn’t what I’d hoped or intended to be honest. I always strive for being funny over being right… but here we are.

You’ve written for TV, radio, and stand-up—how does your creative process differ for each?

It doesn’t really. They’re all different delivery mechanisms for the same thing, jokes. So the tools you use to shape and present the material are slightly different from medium to medium. But at its core you’re just trying to make people laugh so you start with an idea that amuses you and head out from there.

Seeing as the special is about navigating modern life’s absurdities, if Just Trying To Help were required viewing for a school curriculum, what subject would it fall under? Philosophy? Psychology? Detention?

It’s definitely the sort of contrarian piss-taking that got me into many detentions when I was at school!

You can watch ‘Just Trying To Help’; Garrett’s new stand-up special on 800lb Gorilla’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBL2WPmoklY