Two weeks later, the same friend has been dumped by her boyfriend and calls me wanting a good time. Over burgers and martinis she feeds me bitchy morsels about her ex, and wants me to start telling jokes about him. But after Orvillegate, I wonder at what unknown expense to my future social life. The side of my personality that got me blacklisted from birthday stroganoff is momentarily in demand again.

I get it. The funny friend doesn’t go with everything. In fact, I’ve noticed I go best with meals that have ketchup: dissecting boys during walk-of-shame fry-ups, slating plays over a post-theatre pizza, plotting a new world order hunched over end-of-the-night takeaways.

I rarely get invited to family occasions, where I am likely to argue with an auntie or hit on a half cousin. Mostly, I’ve learnt to know my limits. I’m very funny after two large glasses of white, but I won’t get invited back after four.

Sometimes, though, I’ll decide to burn a friendship in favour of impressing someone new and then no topic is off limits. I tell myself that if Mr Andy Warhol could do his car-crash paintings, then I can do my car-crash weddings. Not that I get invited to many weddings. It’s a risk to have me there in moments of sincerity.

To me, much of life is a joke. Comedy is a reminder that almost all of society is absurd. Soldiers are legal murderers. Profit is theft. Marriage is collective make-believe. You spend your life buying a house just so that you can die in it. After 100 years nobody will remember you, unless you’re Britney Spears or Adolf Hitler.

As part of my job, I’ve ghost-written for several comedians over the years and have seen first hand the truth of the stereotype that comedians are mostly depressed and lonely behind closed doors. It’s something I can relate to. I often find life overwhelming and unexplainable in a way that doesn’t seem to bother other people while they’re renovating their flats, updating their LinkedIn or planning their next party.

Was I bullied? Yes. The boys at school worked out that I was gay before I did and it was the escapism of humour (plus friendships with popular girls) that got me through college. Some of the popular boys began to see me in a new light when they realised I was friends with hot girls who found me funny. I’m still chasing that high.

Posh girls have always been embraced. One of my friends, Abigail, used to put her small change in the bin along with her receipt. Another, Caroline, lives in a modest castle where they have a wrapping room, a room just for wrapping gifts. I have often resembled Mr Jarvis Cocker’s rough-edged character in the song “Common People”, bouncing from party to party where I would take centre stage by a breakfast island and start slagging off rugby boys. I learnt to become a bully myself and strike first.

I recently bumped into my school bully at a street-food festival. He apologised and told me how talented he’d privately thought I was. I thanked him, told him he was still looking as sexy as he did at school and we had a little hug in front of a Prawnography seafood truck.

Forgiveness is an even greater drug than love. I locked myself in a Portaloo and cried. It was what I’d needed to hear, but 20 years too late. I wish I could say we then shagged behind a wood-fired oven, but he’s happily married with two kids.

Being funny has helped me cope with stressful situations and stand my ground around big egos, from my first job at Glamour magazine interviewing actresses to my current role working backstage at festivals such as Glastonbury. If you thought fashion designers were tough, try top-shelf techno DJs. As a side hustle, I own a drag queen booking agency, Rent-A-Queen, and it wouldn’t be possible to manage that without a thick skin and an ability to see the lighter side.

It is a wonderful feeling to make someone laugh. It validates you in a particularly heightened fashion. It’s not simply your actions, such as buying a gift, that are being appreciated, but your unique product ID that goes into making a joke.

For me, the best comedy often lies in highlighting delusion – the distance between what something thinks it is and what it is. That is the genius behind Mr Dave Lamb’s narration on the TV show Come Dine With Me. He looks at the contestants, sees what they really are, sees who they think they are and then cat-flips between two trigonometry points.

It’s also why, I believe, the Kardashians are so successful. Behind all the glitz, all the make-up and all the red-carpet events, Ms Kim Kardashian is in on the joke. She studied the Ms Paris Hilton playbook and she perfected it, raising the stakes while always keeping a little comedic valve open. Nothing is less sexy than taking yourself too seriously. Unless you’re a tall, hot, German engineer.

Ultimately, comedy is a defiance against death and a nod to its inevitability. Gallows humour is a way to dissolve life’s terrible and inexplainable macabre condition by undressing and dismissing it. A friend once said, “Humans don’t make sense. Why are our reproductive organs also our waste organs? I reckon some alien kid designed us for a laugh.”

Sometimes in my day job, or should I say night job, producing drag shows, I have to ad lib on the microphone from behind the DJ booth and my rocky past puts me in good stead. A rowdy gay bar is nothing compared to a British boarding school. I keep my best jokes for choice WhatsApp groups and naughty soirées behind closed doors. No matter how many people I accidentally alienate, I know that sooner or later a buddy will get dumped, my phone will buzz and it will be steak frites on them.

Is it wrong that I am already planning what jokes to make while the marriages are ongoing, scrolling Instagram and privately dissing my friend’s husbands? You could call it moral bankruptcy. You could call it survival or you could call it dedication to one’s craft.