When I first came to Manchester in the late 1980s I had the idea of being a comedian. I wasn’t so mad as to give up the day job, but as well as being part of an alternative magic combo (so alternative we didn’t have any tricks), I was also one half of an act involving a blow-up dolphin and a woman who’d been in Coronation Street at least twice. Then I teamed up with Emma Clarke and together we were the hilarious (so we thought) Brassrubbings.

Back in those days there was nowhere for alternative comics to perform in Manchester; it was Bernard Manning and co or nothing. So we had to go to London to perform. It was there that I learnt never to use the word ‘die’ in an act. It’s an open invitation for someone in the audience to shout, “Yeah, and you just have, so f**k off and go home.”

Eventually we did just that. Back in Manchester, I remember thinking that there was a real gap in the market, but I felt helpless: I didn’t have a clue how to put comedy on. A few months later Agraman set up The Buzz Club in Chorlton. The rest, as they say, is history. Caroline Aherne, Steve Coogan, Peter Kay and many more big names had early gigs there.

The future may look bleak and uncertain in many respects, but there are also ways in which things have democratised and opened out.

In 2009, 21 years later, I got the urge to perform again. This time I knew what to do, but what struck me most was how things are much more possible than they used to be. Demarcation lines have become far more fluid. Today, someone running a bar, theatre or a club will willingly talk to someone with a couple of comedians and a band on their books. You don’t have to be an official ‘promoter’ to get a hearing, or indeed to get a booking.

The upshot was that I got in touch with a group of friends and colleagues, and that group eventually morphed into Mish Mash Cabaret. We have since put on a number of shows and will be appearing at Manchester Pride on August Bank Holiday.

It was in this spirit of setting things up and strengthening our potential for doing the sort of work that we wanted to do, that Frankie Mullen and I formed Dovetail. We’d worked on numerous projects together over the years and shared a similar drive and values. So we thought, why not do the work we’d like to do, and do it for the sorts of organisations we like and admire, in the way we want?

When the opportunity arose to share an office and work more closely with Reason Digital, it made real sense. We could swap skills and resources and be able to offer our clients added benefit. When we work together on projects, we have the potential to not only be stronger, but to be greater than the sum of our parts.

This close working relationship has now resulted in the launch of Lunchworks: a series of lunchtime talks. We wanted to find a way of bringing together the sorts of organisations we work with and want to work with – charities, third sector, creative industries and other social enterprises – to discuss some of the issues of the day, particularly the economy, the cuts and the ‘Big Society’.

The first speaker (Friday August 27) is Scottish journalist and ’Scotland’s main public intellectual’ (Sunday Herald), Gerry Hassan. The next speaker (September 24) is Emma Clarke, who as well as now being the voice of the London Underground, is a very canny business woman and master of diversification – something we all need to be good at in these fast-changing times.

The future may look bleak and uncertain in many respects, but there are also ways in which things have democratised and opened out. Nowadays people are much more likely to have a range of persona as well as a range of work interests; we are no longer fixed in one single line of work.

It’s no surprise then that I have done cabaret shows with people who I then work for or who do work for me. Yes, that woman dressed as a comedy buffalo may well be in charge of the next big campaign to rid the North West of discarded blobs of chewing gum. I think that Lunchworks will express some of this spirit, and I hope it will be an inspiration to everyone involved. Comedy buffalos included.

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Image: Julia Brosnan performing as part of Mish Mash Cabaret