Man's journey from brain injury to stand-up comedy

A man who was once told he might never walk or talk again following a devastating brain injury says stand-up comedy has become the key to his recovery.

Ben Shelvin was hospitalised after a drunk driver crashed into his moped during a family holiday to Croatia back in 2003.

Now aged 44, Shelvin, from Salford, has made a near complete recovery, and has gone on to carve out a career performing stand-up comedy, and even run half-marathons.

He described the road to recovery as "a long process" but said the best advice he had to offer was to "just keep going".

Born in 1982, Shelvin said his childhood was very active, and filled with all kinds of sport, including football, athletics, and cricket.

He went on to study at Manchester Metropolitan University, and the day after his graduation flew out to Dubrovnik in Croatia for a two-week family holiday.

Shelvin, then aged 21, would not return home for a month.

"Three days into the trip, me and my brother saw some of the reps from the hotel we were staying in, and they offered us a lift back to the hotel on the back of one of their mopeds," Shelvin said.

"But the one I was on got hit by a car driven by a speeding drunk man on the wrong side of the road."

Shelvin was not wearing a helmet, and a result the repercussions were severe - a smashed femur, fractured skull and dislocated shoulder.

He also suffered brain damage which left him unable to walk or talk for two years.

Shelvin was airlifted back to the UK and spent the next 11 months in hospital in Stoke-on-Trent.

"I was in a wheelchair for two years after the crash and the doctors didn't know if I would ever walk again," he said.

"The outlook was pretty bleak on all fronts really.

"All of my friends had gone travelling around the world, tasting the street food of South America and Mexico, and I'm asking them whether they've tried a Stoke oatcake."

But, slowly, Shelvin began to recover, and a turning point came in 2016 when he successfully applied to take part in the Channel 4 show First Dates, a programme for single people seeking love.

"I ended up trending on social media when it aired," Shelvin said.

"Quite a few people commented that I was really funny, and so a mate of mine who was a professional comedian offered to help me write some material which I performed at his comedy club - and I loved it."

Shelvin spent the next few years writing and performing his own jokes, before another huge setback in 2020.

The coronavirus pandemic shut down performance venues and made it stand-up impossible.

But Shelvin could not sit still - and found another way to continue to flourish.

Shelvin said: "It was 17 or 18 years after my brain injury that I taught myself to run again.

"I started during lockdown, when you were allowed out for your daily exercise, and even though at first I looked like a toddler in an earthquake, and I fell over a lot, I managed to do 1k, then 2k, 5k, and in 2021 I did my first half-marathon."

And, after the pandemic eased, Shelvin eventually quit a retail job he was working in order to get back out and do his stand-up comedy again.

"It's been wild for the last 12 months," he said.

"I just joke about myself and living with a brain injury, dating with a brain injury, and I throw in a little bit about my modern history degree and how it links in with dating."

When asked what advice he would give to his 21-year-old self, Shelvin said: "Just keep going.

"I suffered a lot with depression and still deal with serious anxiety, but just keep going because it will get better.

"It might not be perfect, but it's much, much better than it was."

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