At the age of 58, I’ve finally started to behave myself – and it’s not all that bad

I have spent my entire life not really doing what I’m told. At school I never really listened to anything that was going on at the front of the class – I was far more interested in what was going on at the back of the class and writing notes under the desk to my mates in tiny handwriting about who I fancied and how I was going to “get off with them”.

My O level results were lousy and, even though I was meant to be “good at English”, I got a terrible grade for my A level, possibly because I attempted to read Bleak House the night before the exam, not realising the thing was 700 pages long. I have applied this lack of concentration and waywardness to just about every element of my life since I was very young.

I always thought if I did things my way, then life would be less strenuous and I’d enjoy it more.

The trouble is I never really learned to do anything properly. I never corrected my lazy left swimming leg and consequently have always swum like a mechanical toy frog. I never learned to drive on the motorway, because I couldn’t be bothered to pay for the extra lessons and consequently now must take the train if I need to go anywhere further than the Elephant and Castle.

Yes, I can sew – but only in great big jagged childish stitches. My knitting looks like a nine-year-old’s and my kitchen skills are non-existent.

In the past I was in too much of a hurry to deal with the nuts and bolts of how everything works. At ballet, I wanted to be on point shoes before I could do a basic skip across the room. In German my accent was good but I could never be bothered to get my head around the grammar. Basically I just wanted to be able to show off and anything that required patience in order to be able to really show off went by the wayside. To this day, I still can’t play a recognisable tune on a single musical instrument.

Fortunately I chose a career where the rules really didn’t apply. Back in the early Eighties, so called “alternative comedy” was very much in its infancy and no one really knew what they were doing. Brilliant. I was in my element – I’d found my tribe of ne’er-do-wells and mavericks.

But as the years progressed, I realised there are rules. If you are writing a 90 minute show rather than a 20 minute set, then the audience are mostly likely to lose attention around the 40 minute mark, so that’s when to have your interval. Structure is all and to stay in the business I needed to work harder than I imagined. Luckily I was able to learn on the job and I now know that stand up is like playing a piano – you can show off all you like but if you can’t play your basic scales you will come a cropper.

The trouble with being an adult is that we are given so few chances to start again and learn from scratch. Of course for those who are able to retire with pots of money then the opportunities are endless. I dream of pottery classes, advanced crochet and lino cutting, possibly with some basic cooking classes chucked in for good measure. But to be able to pay for them all I’m going to have to keep working – it’s a vicious circle.

Thanks then to the Marie Curie charity who offered myself and fellow arty-type, presenter Penny Smith, an opportunity to do a watercolour masterclass, filmed for a TV craft channel to raise funds for palliative care.

For the first time in my 58 years, I decided to do what I was told, just to see if it made any difference – as if I actually listened to a teacher and slavishly followed their instructions. We were painting a lake with hills in the background and the Marie Curie daffodils in the foreground. Everything our tutor did I copied, every piece of advice he gave I listened to and put into practice. I became the ultimate class swot – and did it reap rewards? Yes, dammit, my little painted postcard sized lake view is almost worth framing. (Actually it is worth framing and my mum’s getting it whether she likes it or not...)

This experience made me wonder how my life would have turned out had I applied this same focus to everything. For years I have blithely been doing things my way, not particularly listening to anything the experts have to say – about health and fitness, and recycling and mindfulness – and now suddenly I’m wondering what kind of person I could actually be, if after all these years, I started paying attention.

If, after all this time, I stopped messing about at the back of the class, sat up straight and actually listened, what then?