Comedian Sara Pascoe has said she speaks about her experiences with IVF on stage to try and feel proud of herself.
The 44-year-old, who gained public notoriety on panel shows including Never Mind the Buzzcocks , has been open about her fertility struggles when conceiving her sons, who were born in 2022 and 2023 through IVF.
Speaking to Lauren Laverne on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Pascoe said she feels speaking about IVF on stage “feels like a positive way to talk about something that people feel very isolated in”.
“When we first started trying for children doing IVF, I couldn’t do stand-up about it because it was far too raw,” she explained.
“I only really spoke about infertility once I had children and it was reflexing. I also think that’s because I couldn’t be funny about it until I knew the ending.”
Pascoe explained that she didn’t feel able to talk about IVF in her stand up sets until her eldest child Theo was eight-months-old. “It was really like, ‘I definitely have a son. He survived. He’s alive, he’s here,’” she said.
“And I then felt I wanted to share things with people who I knew would be at different stages of it.”
“The other thing with comedy is that people won’t laugh unless they know you’re OK. You can’t tell them the stuff you’re not OK about,” Pascoe added.
Data from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) shows that nearly 21,000 babies were born via IVF in 2024, a substantial increase from 8,700 in 2000.
The fertility regulator's report indicates that IVF births account for 3.1 per cent of all UK births, up from 1.3 per cent in 2000. This marks a significant shift from a decade ago, when the proportion was one in 43 births in 2013.
Side effects of IVF can include mood swings, headaches, cramping, bloating, bleeding, infection, bruising from shots, breast tenderness, potential allergic reactions to medicines, anxiety and depression.
Pascoe praised those who conceive through IVF as “so brave”, and said: “It’s such a big thing to put your body through. Anyone who does it should be so proud of themselves – and that’s what I tried to do when I was talking about it more on stage.”
