Comedy creator

Online funny woman Justine Stafford hopes to open up debate about mental health

BY MICHAEL KEAVENY

Like many people, Nobber comedian and online creator Justine Stafford drew inspiration from a teacher to help point her on the correct career path.

"I went to Kilbeg National School, which was the beginning of everything for me", she said. "Our principal Mrs Flanagan and my teacher Mr Watters had a massive influence on me and were one of the main reasons that I went into media.

“They got us involved in a short film project for primary schools called Fis Films, and our film ended up winning the overall national prize in the Helix in Dublin. I got a camcorder that year for Christmas and started filming everything.".

Having got a taste for film making she entered again, and her home film drew plaudits from some of the biggest names in Irish comedy.

“As a teenager, I entered a film festival in Limerick called Fresh Films, with a film about old people escaping from an old folks home, using my relatives as the cast,” Justine says. “I was delighted because the crowd were laughing at it, but there was one person with a really loud distinctive laugh behind me. I was getting worried that it might distract people from the film, but when I turned around to see who it was, it ended up being Pat Shortt. It was surreal to see someone who I grew up watching laughing at my work. I got to represent Ireland at film festivals around the world in places like Berlin, South Korea and Greece."

A career in media almost never happened for Justine, as she changed her CAO form 11 times on the last day, going back and forth between home economics teaching and media, before eventually settling on film and broadcasting in DIT.

"I previously worked at summer camps and got experience in schools and learned that it wasn't for me. I can look back on my own school experience and see the teachers who had a big influence on my life were those who wanted to be there to educate and positively influence young people, as opposed to those who were more interested in the summer holidays.

“I was terrified of what would happen if I did media and was asking myself questions about whether I would get a stable fulltime job, or what was the career progression. The thing with filmmaking is that anytime you make something, you want it to be perfect, but it never is. If it was perfect, then you can wash your hands of it and walk away. There's always something you could do better. Which makes you want to constantly improve."

After graduating from college, Justine worked briefly from Dublin radio station FM104 before she was offered a job by JOE.ie. There she spent five happy years, developing online content in the position of senior social creative and content creator before she departed earlier this year to work as a freelance creator, a move that has been reaping the rewards, thanks to work she does on the Try Channel, an online platform for Irish comedians.

"I've been getting by on Patreon," she says. “I've built up a following in America from work that I did on the try channel. I started doing a podcast with two lads from the Try Channel on Patreon, and people are very supportive."

As Justine's profile has grown, so too has the recognition she receives from the public.

“When I was putting stuff on my own social media pages, friends or friends of friends would tell me how much they liked my content. But when I started working with JOE, people started approaching me on nights out, especially in Coppers, to compliment me on the videos I made. Last year I was in Florida for a Youtube creator conference. We were in Disneyworld, and about six different groups approached us to take photos and selfies - it was surreal.”

She says one of her most bizarre experiences was when she made a video during one of the lockdowns of a woman on ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ and edited it to make it look like she was being asked what day of the week it was, and she didn't know.

“Then her daughter, who worked for the contact tracing in the UK, reached out to say that they were having a really hard week in work, and it really cheered them up."

However she is conscious of striking the right balance between and not trying to churn out to much material just for the sake of it.

“Sometimes if I don't post online for a few days, people get in touch looking for material, which makes me conscious of falling behind, so I try to find the right balance where I'm creating material because I want to, not because I feel I need to. There are times when I've needed to take a step back from all platforms to avoid burnout. You're just worn out, and you're no good to anyone then. You need to set up boundaries for yourself.”

Much of Justine's material is derived from her own life experiences, especially her battles against depression, which she hopes by talking about in a light-hearted way, she can help normalise the discussion around mental health.

"When I started doing stand up, a lot of my material was from my own experiences, especially about my mental health, which could be quite dark and grim. I decided if I could put a funny spin on it to make it easier to digest. We're getting better at talking about it, but people don't know how you want them to react, so if you make a joke about what you've gone through, people are more at ease. You need humour because we're all going through similar problems in life. It then enables people to bring it away from comedy clubs and talk about it as a topic outside of it.”

Justine’s issues started off with eating disorders in her first year of secondary school.

“I had anorexia which developed into depression and bulimia. It followed me through college. I went through good and bad periods, including two suicide attempts."

In 2018 Justine was diagnosed with Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, also known as EUPD, which she says came as a massive relief to her.

“Up until then, I felt I was the only person going through this, and there was something wrong with me. Growing up and even in college, there wasn't much discussion about it, so I kept it to myself. It wasn't something that was talked about at the time.

“The discussion around mental health began to change, but I knew what I was feeling wasn't quite depression. It involved severe highs and lows, unstable relationships, self-harming and being completely overwhelmed and anxious. I thought there was no help for me. But finding out that other people have it and there was a specific treatment was huge."

While the conversation around mental health has changed in recent years, Justine still believes there is a lot of progress that needs to be made on the subject in Ireland.

"We still depend on charities in Ireland because of a lack of funding from the government. I've been fortunate that I could see someone privately, but that still took three months. How long will someone on a public sector waiting list have to wait? It's insane. People are also more aware of mental health, but we need to figure out where we go from here. What do we do with the information to help make changes? The impact of this pandemic is going to be horrendous on people. I've heard of people on six-month waiting lists already. I dread to think where we'll be post Covid.”