Chances are you’ve never heard of me. I’ve been doing stand-up for 20 years. I come from a working class background, raised on the belief that if you worked hard enough, you’d get where you wanted. In comedy, that’s kind of a lie. Hard work just about keeps you afloat in an industry filled with middle class nepotism.

My family were grafters, my dad left school at 14, my grandads were a plumber and a painter, my nan worked in a factory. Work ethic was drummed into me – keep your head down, push on, wait for your chance. Trouble is, in comedy, chances don’t come through persistence. They come alarmingly often through connections, money, and going to the right uni – things the middle class have in abundance. There are far more Ruperts and Berties than there are Daves and Tracys in the comedy career-making department.

I was working nights as an apprentice electrician with my dad and his mate Phil. My dad switched the break room telly from Sky Sports to BBC Two – and there I was, on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, sat next to Noel Fielding and Pixie Lott making my TV debut. It should have been a life-changing moment. As I bantered with Tinie Tempah my now defunct Twitter page went from 300 to 5000 followers. The show finished and Phil’s words as he flicked the channel back to the latest transfer tittle tattle summed it up: “Well you ain’t on the telly now — get back up the ladder.”

That’s a working class comedian’s mindset: keep grinding, don’t celebrate, don’t assume the spotlight will last. There are still very few working class examples of people that have made it in the entertainment world. Meanwhile, middle class comics never had to choose between chasing their dream or making rent. They didn’t need safety net jobs — they already had an antique teak chest full of safety nets.

Twenty years in I have built a career I am proud of; Despite not capitalising fully on my brief time in the limelight. I was both too young and naive and definitely not good enough as an actual stand up comedian to build on the momentum at the time. I now gig every weekend at top clubs, I am a regular at my two favourite clubs, Top Secret and Up the Creek, I’m just about to finish my first tour with a hugely special show in London to commemorate my 20-year anniversary. I’ve got a special about to drop on YouTube and I am going to see Oasis.

I want more I want fame, I want a pension. The reality is I work in an industry obsessed with who is new and who is friends with who and who went to Oxbridge, rather than who has gotten really good at what they do. Some days, like today I increasingly feel I like I am shouting into the void “notice me, notice me, notice me” whilst perpetually being ghosted by an industry obsessed with mostly middle class voices. It makes me fairly often feel like I want to quit.

I get that some people who don’t like or rate me will see this article simply as a guy who struggled to escape the middle of the pack and is being a whiny little bitch. but I also know there are so many brilliant comics who feel like me and will feel, to use a zeitgeisty word “seen”.

There are countless comics – obsessed with honing our craft, and growing into brilliant acts yet are still seemingly invisible to the middle class cartel who’ve ring-fenced traditional industry spoils.

There is an amazingly refreshing way forward though. A trail being blazed by people like Jen Brister, Mark Simmons, Vittorio Angelone, Mo Gilligan, who have been brilliant and ignored so went directly to the public to find their own audience through Instagram, tiktok and podcasts. It’s taking the power away from the Sebs in offices and giving it to the consumers of our craft. So my message to any casual comedy fans reading this is, If you like us, the best way you can help is simple: support our stuff online.

Like, share, comment. Literally every time you press that like button it makes algorithms push us out to a wider audience and gives us greater control of our own destiny and lets us build an audience outside the closed of tradition means. With the help of the people, maybe skill and elbow grease can get me where I want to go. Where I want you to go however is to the following link and buy tickets for my show on Sept 26th at the Underbelly in Soho where I will be having a big old knees up of a gig with comedy from me and my podcast pal Bilal Zafar, and special musical guest Adam Smith followed by a cocktail party in the bar after. So come and celebrate with me as I launch into a few more decades of seeing where my hard work takes me.

Buy tickets for Joey Page Nice One! at the Underbelly, London on September 26 here.