In June, I had the pleasure of appearing on Comedy Central’s new panel show: Am I the A**hole?, hosted by Jimmy Carr alongside TikTok star GK Barry and comedian Jamali Maddix. Based on the infamous Am I the Asshole? (AITA) forum on Reddit, contestants present a scenario from their personal lives to the panel, who decide whether that contestant is or isn’t the asshole in the situation.
The story that landed me my television debut concerns an old flame of mine. I met him at university in 2019 and we saw each other casually and regularly for two years. During Covid we drifted apart, before the spark was rekindled three years later when I drunkenly invited him to a house party and snogged him by the kitchen sink.
I knew in my heart that our relationship was based on little more than mutual physical attraction, but by the end of 2023, we had started going on dates that extended beyond the bedroom: brunches, pub trips and even Christmas markets. The situationship was going well, until I saw him pay for our mulled wine from a small coin purse. This sight gave me such a violent case of the ick that I ghosted him. It was up to the panel to decide whether I was an asshole for doing so.
Filming took place on a hot summer day, so I arrived sweaty and apprehensive, with no idea what to expect. I was greeted by an enthusiastic young member of the production team, who led me through a Severance-esque maze of identical corridors. She asked if I had “ever done anything like this before”. I hadn’t.
We eventually arrived at the green room. It felt a lot like the waiting room at the doctors; chairs lined against the wall, strangers sitting anxiously—except here was a snack table and a big TV. My fellow castmates were chatting: “Why are you here?” “What makes you the asshole?” I helped myself to a Diet Coke and got stuck into the conversation.
There was a mother and daughter who would be going head-to-head over whether the mother was an asshole for having announced her pregnancy at her daughter’s birthday party. And there was a man from Somerset who had developed a habit of nicking items from other people’s trollies at the supermarket (an activity he made into a bingo-style game).
The stylist came in to check our outfits. I’d gone with a hot pink, slightly poofy dress, my signature black heeled boots and a chunky pink and green bejewelled choker. I wasn’t at risk of failing to stand out, but I was at risk of flashing the audience. The stylist asked me to stand up, take a few strides, sit back down again and immediately determined me a flash risk. I was swiftly taken to another room, where I showed her my pants (I chose a bad day to wear my ugliest pair) and she handed me a pair of black shorts to wear underneath.
Once my nether regions were safely covered, I was allowed to return to the waiting room, where I chatted with the other guests and nervously awaited my time on stage, which turned out to be several hours later.
I was to go on as part of a group of three, all of us having ick-related stories to tell. One man got the ick from a woman’s laugh, while another woman ended her relationship when her date took food off her plate without asking. The panel and the live studio audience were to decide which of us was the biggest asshole.
When we entered the studio, Jimmy Carr warmly welcomed us onto the stage to a round of applause. I’ll be honest, I can’t remember much of what happened in the 20-or-so minutes I was up there. But I’m a confident public speaker and I’m not afraid of Jimmy’s honking laugh, so I told my story with as much humour and charm as I could.
It was a relief to come off stage knowing that I hadn’t fumbled my words, and that compared to the other two contestants I got off lightly from the panel’s ribbing. At the very least, I didn’t have any videos of me dredged up from social media for the audience’s amusement.
My episode airs the week after I’m writing this. My friends are keen to have a “viewing party”, as it’s the first (and maybe the last) time any of us has graced the TV screen. I’m apprehensive; what if I’ve been given a horrible edit? What if my makeup looks terrible under the studio lights? Am I going to get trolled on Reddit? At least I’ve crossed off a bucket list item that I didn’t foresee in 2025: appearing on TV.
