Hannah Platt: ‘I’m a crotchety old man trapped in the body of a little girl’

How did you get into comedy?
I’d always wanted to do it but was way too self-conscious. Then when I was very depressed, staying on my friend’s couch, I asked if I could jump on the open mic she ran. It went well, likely because my friend made everyone we knew come down. Hearing a laugh of recognition, after saying something you felt so isolated and alone in thinking, made me want to continue performing. I started gigging around Manchester. It was early shows in places like XS Malarkey that made me think, maybe this could be more than a hobby.

Who did you admire when you were starting out?
I love acts who have their own voice – you can’t imagine anyone else telling their jokes. I really related to Dylan Moran and Rich Hall’s downbeat personas. I’m a crotchety old man trapped in the body of a little girl.

What is your debut show, Defence Mechanism, about?
I’ve always had quite a harsh view of the world but when I found out I had body dysmorphia, I thought: if my perception of myself is warped, maybe my view of everything else is too. Unlearning a worldview isn’t an easy feat, but it can be very funny.

Comedy often serves as a form of therapy. What impact has writing this show had on your experience of mental health?
Last year was maybe the worst year of my life, and I was writing this show, putting all this insane pressure on myself, being absolutely miserable … and something just snapped. Comedy is my favourite thing and it gave me a break from myself sometimes, but it had just started to become another thing to beat myself up over. If the show wasn’t good enough, it meant I, as a person, wasn’t good enough either. Now I’m doing a lot better it’s fun again because I’m doing it for me, I like what I’ve made, I’m proud of it and I’d like to share it with people. It’s very hard for me to say I like things I’ve done, so it must be alright.

Your show also looks at the commercialisation of self-help and mindfulness …
It doesn’t sit right with me that mindfulness is now a billion-dollar industry. Why am I looking at a mindfulness app on my phone when it’s my phone that’s stressing me out? Why is it so expensive to take a course on how to be still? Why do shops have books about how to breathe next to the avocado Jellycats? What are we doing? It feels like it’s trying to make self-help simultaneously kitsch and useless, expensive and hollow. If it helps you, that’s fantastic. I just don’t like how it profits off the fact you weren’t well in the first place. It’s icky, trying to make you buy tat to help a mindset probably made worse by consumerism.

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Has your northern upbringing influenced your comedic style?
I don’t know where the stereotype came from that northerners are friendly and welcoming … it seems patronising and not true. I think the sense of humour in the north is just endless mick-taking and bullying. I’ll bully you if I love you, I’ll bully you if I’m flirting with you, I’ll bully you if you mean the world to me. If I’m nice to you it’s probably under duress or in private so no one would believe you if you told them. That kind of hardened shell, with a caring nature underneath, is a big theme in my standup.

Any bugbears from the world of comedy?
It’s an industry where classism, racism and sexism are rife – it isn’t a level playing field by any means. It’s frustrating, because if you didn’t go to the right school to meet the right people to afford to live in the right city, you can feel like you’re forever swimming against the current, while getting repeatedly smacked in the face by the oars of a private school rowing boat as it smoothly glides past you.

Worst advice you’ve ever been given?
A comic I never would have asked for advice (so naturally, he was giving it out left right and centre) told me if I was going to talk about being depressed, I shouldn’t wear makeup or dress up on stage because it wasn’t believable. I’m not trying to be a caricature of a depressed person, I’m just a person who gets depressed. I think if I saw someone come on stage in pyjamas with mascara running down their face and saying they were depressed, I’d assume they were taking the mick.

• Hannah Platt: Defence Mechanism is at Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh , 31 July-25 August