Alison Spittle on her battle with life-threatening septicaemia

Alison Spittle’s use of weight-loss drugs provides material for her act.

It might have been Valentine’s Day, but falling head over heels resulted in a near-death experience rather than a romantic encounter for comedian Alison Spittle.

The Irish star didn’t think too much about her tumble on a train until a few days later, when her leg blew up to twice its size and turned bright red.

Fearing she had broken a bone, she presented to A&E, and while she waited to be seen, a huge blister formed on her shin.

“Within the space of an hour, another seven blisters formed, so I knew something was wrong,” she recalled. “It looked like something from a body horror movie.”

When doctors examined Alison, they quickly realised she was very ill. She was diagnosed with cellulitis – a bacterial infection of the skin and underlying tissue – which developed into septicaemia.

“My body was going into infection and the next week was scary as the doctors tried to quell it,” she said. “I was in a bit of a pickle. I couldn’t leave my bed for days, which was something I’d never experienced. I found myself Googling my symptoms while I was in hospital. You’re in the arms of the NHS but you’re also looking up YouTube videos about how to deal with septicaemia as if you’re trying to fix a leak in the sink.

“It was a scary time and the doctors never got to the bottom of what caused it – I’d been to the beach and maybe I got a nick in the leg, but we don’t know for sure.

“It took me months to fully recover. I had two massive holes like a bowling ball in my leg for ages – I still have the scars.

“Because I’m self-employed, I had to go around with a crutch and work while I was ill.

“The comedy shows I did at that time were probably terrible because I was riddled with septicaemia. There’s nothing worse than having a sick comedian in the corner trying to tell jokes,” she laughed.

That terrifying time 16 months ago forced Alison to consider her health and lifestyle.

“It felt like a turning point in my life where I had to think about things and make efforts to change,” she said. “The doctors said I had to lose weight, but they had been advising me to do that for years. This was the first time, because of the septicaemia, where it felt serious and that I had to listen.

“The thing is, I had been happy previously. Now that I had to lose weight, I had to make sure to continue liking myself too. I’ve been trying to marry the two versions of myself – the one that was happy the way I was, and the one that is actively trying to lose weight.”

It was when she tried to change her eating habits that she realised there might be a bigger issue at play. Alison said: “I just couldn’t stop eating, even though I was so afraid of being in hospital, and that’s when it hit me that I have an eating disorder.”

The comic, who’s been seen on Pointless Celebrities, Celebrity Gogglebox and Richard Osman’s House of Games, began researching weight-loss injections and decided to try them.

“I looked up Mounjaro, which I knew some people were on. As a fat person trying to lose weight, I find the discourse around these injections very funny. There seems to be this fear that thin people are going to get their hands on them, but you shouldn’t be making it more difficult for fat people to access the injections because a TV presenter made a documentary about them.

“My reality is they’re working for me, they’re perfectly fine and I no longer think about food to the degree I did previously. I’m making healthier decisions. I eat now as a way to fuel myself rather than a way to quell my feelings or as something I can control. That’s been a really great and beautiful thing.

“But if I didn’t have my health difficulties then I wouldn’t be on them, and I wouldn’t care.”

Alison has used the difficult events of the past year as material for her latest comedy hour, Big, which she brings to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer, having received rave reviews and sell-out audiences for her two previous shows, Soup and Run.

“I’m a working-class comedian – if I can’t monetise this trauma then what can I do with it?” she smiled. “It’s like someone’s thrown a pile of bricks into my front garden. I need to turn them into a rockery and plant some herbaceous flowers.

“I’ve always done comedy about serious subjects. I feel that’s my culture, laughing up the back of a funeral. My comedy is laughing at the most horrific things.”

While Alison, who has a Radio 4 series called Petty Please and is the co-presenter of BBC Sounds podcast Wheel of Misfortune, wants the show to be funny and joyful, she also wants to put across her anger.

“The worst side effect of the injections is that people are treating me nicer because they notice I’ve lost weight,” she said. “I’m angry on behalf of me from a year ago. I’m not ashamed for being as fat as I was, or as unfit as I was, and I don’t think I have more value to society now that I’m thinner than I was.

“I was crying on the couch to a fat female comedian friend about this and she said: ‘I hate to break it to you Alison, but you’re still fat,’ and that was the nicest thing I’d heard in my life! Another comedian told me I wasn’t fat enough to tell the fat jokes I’m telling, which I also took as a compliment. I’m like Schrodinger’s fat – it depends on the day how I feel about feeling fat.”

She continued: “I’ve got into running now and other things I wasn’t into before. People look back on things with regret, but I couldn’t give a toss about running before. I don’t hate myself for that. It didn’t appeal to me, now it does and I like it.

“I used to get called fat b***h quite a lot – it was what I was going to call the show, but Edinburgh City Council said I couldn’t put that on a poster. It used to be the way a lot of people would finish an altercation with me. The exciting thing about going on TV is it makes your mum proud, but then you get the onslaught of people concerned for your health, or people angry that you’re on TV being as fat as you are, or those sexually attracted to you but angry about it. Those are the three interactions I get.”

Once she completes her month at the Fringe, Alison will take the show around the UK on tour and will also perform at the Dublin Fringe, but she has her eyes on another market.

“I don’t think any comedians are doing this subject matter yet, so I’m happy to be one of the first. I’d love to go to America with it, where there’s lots of fat or formerly fat people, and they’re all on the jabs. That’s my market – the fat, the formerly fat and the fat allies.”

Alison Spittle: Big, Monkey Barrel 1, July 29-August 24 (except the 12th), Edinburgh