Performing my new show has been exciting and terrifying. I’m not exactly a different person [having had cancer], but I talk about different things, so I don’t have any older material to fall back on. I was ridiculously anxious, but it’s opened now and it worked, people laughed, so it feels good.

In many ways, the show wrote itself because it’s the way I’ve always looked at life. I have to say there was a long period of treatment where I was not seeing the funny side, but there was enough. I don’t have any imagination, which is just horrible for a writer! So, everything in the show happened, it’s true.

Denise Scott. Photo © Nicole Reed

Growing up in Melbourne, we didn’t have a record player until pretty late, but there was music, because we had the radio on. I don’t know how I worked out how to listen to classical music, because that wouldn’t have been the station Mum and Dad had it on, but clearly I found a way. When I was young, I used to stay home from school on my own because...