At university, she went down the drama route and wanted to be seen as a “serious actor”. Always “desperate to be a performer”, she was constantly doing something creative, taking steps towards making that dream a reality. But comedy was still on her mind, and so Petts signed up for her first stand-up gig in Kentish Town, packing the room with all her friends. “I crushed it like I’ve never crushed it before,” she remembers. “But then [at] my second gig, I completely tanked it.”

She adds: “Sometimes you have a good gig and sometimes you have a terrible one. It can be both soul-destroying and life-affirming and I carried on doing it, and thank god I did because I love it.”

Like many other industries, comedy hasn’t always been too welcoming towards women. But Petts thinks things are starting to move in the right direction, with more women seeing comedy as a viable option for them. “The main issue is that stand-up is still only accessible to people with money,” she says. “So I’d love to see more championing of working-class comedians, similar to how the comedy circuit used to be in the 80s – a playground for the working class.”

If You Can’t Say Anything Nice will be Petts’ third solo run at Soho Theatre and the comedian is excited to get back on stage – so much so that she’s her own support act. “I go on and do around 25 minutes of crowd work at the beginning; I love it,” she says. “It gives me an insight into what the audience is like on the night – some of the stories they have! – and it informs the show in a different way. Every show is truly different.”

If You Can’t Say Anything Nice is at Soho Theatre in London from 30 October-4 November, before a nationwide tour. For more information and tickets, visit chloepetts.org

“I decided I was just going to be pissed off”: why comedian Chloe Petts is done playing nice