I spent twenty-five years as a chef. Long shifts, short tempers, and a diet held together by stolen sausages, caffeine, cigarettes, and whatever scraps were left once service finally died. After a rough break-up and a spell where life felt like it had quietly stalled, I decided — for reasons still unclear — that this was my moment to try comedy.

People romanticise kitchens now. Photos online: chefs perched on mayo buckets like it’s a picnic, grinning like pirates after a good day’s graft. In reality there were no mayo buckets. And if there were, someone would kick it from under you for a laugh. That’s the culture. It keeps you sharp. It keeps you slightly broken. It keeps you coming back.

My day ran on nicotine and adrenaline. Nick a sausage off breakfast when no one’s looking. Two coffees before lunch. Two or three fags after. Maybe a power nap in the afternoon if the place didn’t need you to be two people at once. Then dinner service: heat, noise, orders coming in like threats. After? The reward. A four-pack from the petrol station and a meal deal eaten in the car like a guilty secret. Then sleep. Then repeat.

Addiction lives quietly in places like that. It doesn’t announce itself; it blends in. People think of addicts as criminals, as if we’re all lurking in alleyways looking for someone’s nan to mug. Most of us are just ordinary people trying to feel okay for five minutes.

Gambling got me worst. It’s everywhere now — sport comes with a constant hum of betting adverts, like temptation has a sponsorship deal. I once backed a golfer at 250-to-1. I hate golf.

Four days I watched him creep up the leaderboard. Final day, he’s in the lead. I’m sat in my car on a break, gripping the steering wheel like I’m in the tournament myself. Second-to-last hole: splash. Water. I felt the drop in my stomach like a trapdoor.

Then a playoff. Same hole. Same water. He wins.

For five minutes I was invincible — like the universe had finally glanced my way and nodded. Then

I was up at two in the morning watching American ice hockey, chasing that feeling, clicking through odds like they were doors to a better life. No other addiction swings you from euphoria to despair that fast. And no other addiction is advertised like a harmless hobby.

I wasn’t meant to be a chef. At school I was good at sport and useless at staying interested.

These days people might call it ADHD. Back then it was simpler. I left school with two options: catering or hairdressing. Catering was underneath hairdressing in the prospectus, so I chose it like you’d choose a sandwich.

First kitchen I worked in, the head chef kept vodka in the freezer, the sous had wine in the fridge, and the kitchen porter did lines in the toilet. Any sensible person would have walked straight back out. I stayed. I felt understood.

Years later I won a cooking competition. Someone asked my mum why I became a chef, expecting a story about baking with my gran or learning recipes at home. My mum said, “Because he was hungry.”

That’s the truest thing anyone’s ever said about me. Now I’m trying comedy. Not because I’m cured or enlightened or reborn. Because I’ve got stories,and I’m tired of swallowing them. Because maybe the point isn’t to become a new person —maybe it’s to stop pretending you were never that person in the first place.

Paul O’Neill

Paul O’Neill is a UK-based chef-turned-comedian and writer. After twenty-five years in professional kitchens, he now writes creative non-fiction about work, addiction, and reinvention.