Sara Pascoe tries to be proud of using IVF by discussing it in her comedy

Sara Pascoe has said she is trying to be proud of herself for her experiences using IVF when she talks about it in her stand-up comedy.

The London-born comedian, 44, has previously spoken about her struggles with fertility and has been open about conceiving her sons, who were born in 2022 and 2023, through IVF.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs with Lauren Laverne, Pascoe said she does not regret talking about the topic in her comedy as it “feels like a positive way to talk about something that people feel very isolated in”.

She said: “When we first started trying for children doing IVF, I couldn’t do stand-up about it because it was far too raw.

“I only really spoke about infertility once I had children and it was reflexing. I also think that’s because I couldn’t be funny about it until I knew the ending.”

Pascoe said she did not feel ready to talk about the topic onstage until her eldest son Theo was eight-months-old, and said: “It was really like, ‘I definitely have a son. He survived. He’s alive, he’s here’.

“And I then felt I wanted to share things with people who I knew would be at different stages of it.

“The other thing with comedy is that people won’t laugh unless they know you’re OK. You can’t tell them the stuff you’re not OK about.”

Pascoe said that when she started to speak about the subject in her comedy, she “loved” that it applied to people in the audience, adding: “There was something about sharing that felt like a positive way to talk about something that people feel very isolated in.”

She hailed people who try to conceive through IVF as “so brave”, and said: “It’s such a big thing to put your body through. Anyone who does it should be so proud of themselves – and that’s what I tried to do when I was talking about it more on stage.”

Pascoe is notoriously open about her personal life in her work, and has also detailed having an abortion when she was 17 years old in her autobiography titled Animal: The Autobiography Of A Female Body.

She told host Laverne her agent advised her against including the anecdote in the book and said: “I think the thing about me in the oversharing is that the sharing always feels like so much more important than any privacy.

“And actually, I’m not embarrassed. I’ve never really felt uncomfortable talking about a biographical detail.”

Pascoe has been a comic for almost two decades and has appeared across comedy panel shows including QI, Mock The Week and Would I Lie To You.

She has also written three books, including her debut novel titled Weirdo which was published in 2024 and won the Jilly Cooper Prize for fiction last year.

Listen to the full Desert Island Discs episode on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4 from Sunday at 10am.