There is something beautiful about raising a child as a sole parent – but that doesn’t mean it’s easy

I went to see ‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’ at the Apollo, and I wasn't prepared for it to yank up emotions I bury deep and for them to explode all over Row L, Seat 22

When you’re a single parent, your relationship with your children intensifies (Shappi Khorsandi)

I’ve spent much of this week lost on Twitter, wrapped up in arguments, discussions and raspberry-blowing while debating free speech. When embroiled in a Twitter storm, it can feel like you’ve let a horde of shouty, self-righteous strangers into your home and every time you push them out, one or two get back in through the window and down the chimney.

Respite came when I chucked my phone and all the shouty people into a drawer and skipped off to see the hit musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. My friend and fellow comic Phil Nichol is in it. I was excited to see him shake his tail feather. I had no idea about the storyline. I never look things up before I see them. I thought the film Tyrannosaur was about dinosaurs. If you’ve seen you’ll understand why I was in a state of shock for most of it.

“Jamie” is about a clever and funny 16-year-old who dreams of being a drag queen. I thought it would be a fun, camp roller coaster, and it was but, oh my, I wasn’t prepared for it to yank up emotions I bury deep and for them to explode all over Row L, Seat 22.

My hiccupping sobs were dramatic enough to make me leave my seat and watch Josie Walker, who plays Jamie’s mum, sing Tom MacRae’s heart-rending “He’s My Boy” from the back until I was able to pull myself together.

Jamie’s mum is a single mum like me. She tries to protect her glorious son from the reality of his dad not wanting to be in the picture. Walker belting out that song in all her cropped-hair vulnerability brought up all my own feelings about being the sole parent of my daughter. Feelings I keep bottled and capped tight in the farthest part of my emotional pit – because going anywhere near them would release the sobbing snot carnival I found myself in at the Apollo Theatre.

Mums just get on with it, never allowing children to fall further than we can catch them. It can be devastating to stop and dwell on the reality that the little people we steer through life will a) one day wander about in the world without us around and b) will no longer inform us at the dining table that they need a poo.

While my boy has a loving father, my daughter – like Jamie – just has her mum. When you’re a single parent, your relationship with your children intensifies. They see and hear my thoughts, emotions, share the decision making more than they would if I had a partner. It’s even more intense if you are the sole parent – I am mum, dad, everything to my girl.

She has never met her biological father. The nuts and bolts of why that is is something I don’t talk about publicly because my daughter is only four and it’s her story to hear and make sense of and do an Edinburgh show about.

I went through my pregnancy alone. Her biological father never felt her velvety baby skin or melted in her delicious dark-eyed gaze as I do a hundred times a day, whether I’m with her or not. He’s never heard her quick and charming wit when she wants to get out of trouble or experienced the bliss of her cuddles, never wiped her tears when she’s fallen off her bike or had to stop himself laughing when she’s sulking because she’s not allowed to have chocolate cake for breakfast. He’s never seen her fabulous improvised dances, smelt her sugary breath or felt the avalanches of love she pours on her family and friends. He has always been absent.

She knows about him. She began to ask when she was about two and a half – we grew cress and talked about seeds and how a nice man helped mummy make her. She asks questions, I answer honestly and simply and she quickly switches her attention to the cat, or rabbit or asks me how bogey is made and the conversation is over. As she gets older, her attention won’t easily be swerved and she’ll want answers. I know that no answer I give will draw a line under it for her.

She has father figures in my dad, my brother, her brother’s dad and a close male friend of ours who loves her endlessly – but it’s not the same. Of course it’s not the same.

Like Jamie’s mum, above all, I want my fatherless daughter to never feel rejected, but is that possible? Perhaps my breakdown at the Apollo was because I know I can’t be sure I can protect her from that, I can just support her fiercely as she navigates her way around it through the rage of the teenage years and beyond and hope she unburdens herself of any pain by giving it all to me.

I’m taking my son to see the show next week. Jamie is a wonderful role model. I’ll take my daughter when she’s older (this will run and run). I made enough of an exhibition of myself at the show last time without going again and chasing my four-year-old who will not understand why she can’t jump on the stage and dance on a desk with Jamie.