Writer-comedian Aidan Comerford found himself being a little too forthright one day when the doctor asked how he was. Joined by his wife, Martha on The Ray Darcy Show, he described the sequence of events that led to him publishing his memoir, Cornflakes For Dinner: How I found magic in a life turned upside-down. His answer to his doctor’s routine inquiry was a list of stressful situations:
“I discovered that my daughters are on the autistic spectrum, my wife is suffering from depression. I think I'm going to lose my job and my house and for a while, I was worried I might have stomach cancer, and very recently someone just shoved a massive pipe down my throat…”
While Aidan and Martha say that they knew very quickly they were right for each other, kids didn't come quite as quickly as they had imagined:
“We thought that once you take the brakes off, you know, the kids just come…and that didn’t happen for us and that’s sort of where the book starts really.”
Aidan and Martha went on to have two kids, Ailbhe and Sophie. Martha described parenthood to Ray as “bliss…everything we’d ever wanted.” While Martha was pregnant with Sophie, problems started to develop with Ailbhe’s behaviour.
“She was not happy. She was difficult…aggressive, she was hostile and we couldn’t work out what the pattern was….and then Sophie was born and, oh my god, it kicked off. Ailbhe couldn't be left in the room with Sophie.”
Martha explained that both Ailbhe and Sophie were eventually diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum. There were yet more setbacks on top of that, as Aidan recalled:
“Sophie was diagnosed in September 2010. And 4 days later I was made redundant. It was my 34th birthday. That was a fun week in our house!”
Aidan terms his reaction to these events as a kind of desire to be “Super Husband”. That lasted about 3 months. Determined to take himself less seriously in his comedy, Aidan wrote a comedy song which was featured on The Ray Darcy Show. He puts some of the “blame” for the book on Ray.
“At the time, that was really really encouraging. So, actually, quite a lot of this is your fault.”
Ray wanted to know how Aidan came to write a book when his creative outlet had been musical comedy up until this. Martha told Ray that she had been posting in a Facebook group called “Oh My God, What A Complete Aisling”. Upon her mentioning it to Aidan, he “waded in and stole all my shiny new friends”. A representative from Gill Books contacted Aidan after seeing one of his posts about his family, offering him a book deal. Ray put it to Aidan that Martha helped him out a great deal with the book.
“Well, she did have to read it three times…”
Listen to the full interview with Aidan and Martha Comerford on The Ray Darcy Show here.