Radio Review: Scott Bennett – Blood sugar baby

Scott Bennett's 'Blood Sugar Baby' is a half-hour stand-up special on BBC Sounds, in which the comedian recounts the year-long odyssey he and his wife Gemma went on with their daughter Olivia (Liv).

When Liv was a baby, she started to display concerning symptoms – which led to a long stay in hospital, endless rounds of heel-prick glucose tests, and (spoiler alert!) a diagnosis of a rare blood sugar condition: congenital hyperinsulinism (CHI).

Bennett begins by giving us an important caveat: yes, this is the story of a critically ill baby, but thankfully, she's a delightfully healthy, normal, even annoying teenager now, so we, the audience, can relax. In fact, live comedy is an excellent medium for such a tale – after all, as Bennett points out, laughing is 'how we cope with life; that's the catharsis!' And this certainly helps ease our way into the story, which starts with the visceral image of two new parents finding their baby listless, barely breathing and blue at the lips and eyes.

Liv's blood sugar levels were critically low, and despite a ceaseless roulette of tests and treatments, nothing seemed to work until the 'miracle moment', in which a visiting doctor overheard the nurses who'd been looking after Liv talking about her strange case and said: 'That sounds like CHI'.

So what is CHI? A rare condition, CHI is, as one doctor reportedly said to Bennett and his wife, 'the opposite of diabetes' – in which an overproduction of insulin leads to dangerously low levels of blood sugar (hypoglycaemia). As glucose is a key fuel for the brain, untreated CHI can lead to serious issues such as seizures and even brain injury.

In Liv's case, after Bennett 'put a tie on' – something I'll get to momentarily – and advocated for more help on his daughter's behalf, she was put on diazoxide to help manage the condition, was referred to a specialist unit in Manchester, and was sent to one of the two places in the world that could scan a baby's pancreas, in Berlin (not, as Bennett hoped, Philadelphia).

An element of the show I found particularly touching was the notion previously mentioned of putting on a tie. This is the advice given to Bennett by his dad when he was preparing to speak to Liv's doctor and demand better care – as Bennett notes, the nature of a massive institution like the NHS is that 'if you're passive, you're just going to get caught in it'.

He positions putting a tie on as the working-class man's way of 'level[ing] up, dealing with authority', as in the doctor-patient dynamic here, but the phrase also stands in for the ways in which men express their emotions. Because having a desperately sick child is a stressful, upsetting, exhausting time, and yet Bennett fondly explains that in such situations. The men in his life (and by extension, men in general) give practical rather than emotional support.

This is reflected again in Gemma's dad – who apparently has never said he loves Bennett, and doesn't go in for physical affection – did show his love by fitting them a new boiler when their old one packed it in during the year they spent in hospital with Liv.

With anecdotes throughout, we really get a moving picture of the agonies of being a parent of a sick child. The special itself, however, is extremely funny and engaging. In fact, Bennett is a master of the tightrope, carefully treading the line between recounting the deep panic and hopelessness of a parent in this situation and breaking the tension for the audience with a perfectly delivered joke.

He's also really good at breaking down the science – the condition is the 'opposite of diabetes', the pancreas is shaped like a 'little chilli', the gene is recessive in him and should've been cancelled out by his wife's genetics but that reaction was silenced for some reason in this case – and that's how you know your wife is really mad at you: 'when even her DNA gives you the silent treatment!'

Perhaps my one criticism here is the medium itself: as an audio recording, it doesn't quite capture the true magic of a stand-up special, as we miss the visual jokes from Bennett's expressions and gestures.

As signposted at the start, Liv's story ends happily, after a successful surgery that reversed the condition. Bennett speaks briefly about the lasting effects of the blood sugar saga – he is aware that they are very lucky that Liv didn't have any neurological damage (40 percent of children with CHI have some sort of neurological issue) and is broadly healthy, but the experience changed him and his wife. Going from confident parents to 'nervy parents', the type they never wanted to be. But, as he says, 'time does heal' and they went on to have a second daughter who thankfully didn't inherit the CHI gene.

Still, Liv's experience with CHI has had a lasting impact, as the medical community has learned from her case – 'she's in textbooks!'. And protocols for reacting to CHI have completely changed – gone are the rounds of heel pricking and vomiting Liv had to experience, now children are expedited straight to having scans, and the condition is taken much more seriously.

How does teenage Liv feel about her dad telling her story in this way? According to Bennett she, in that laid-back teenager way, didn't really mind – but she wants a cut of the book deal – and fair's fair, it is her story, after all.

I can't recommend this special enough. It's funny, heartwarming, captivating, and sheds light on a rare condition. The medium of comedy makes it extremely accessible, and what's more, it's free on BBC Sounds. Go have a listen.