I got out of it because I was pretty tired of people telling me that if I stayed away from doing 'political' or 'social' comedy and did more observational stuff, more popular stuff, I could make a lot of money out of it. Not just friends, but a couple of agents and the husband of a friend's sister who works in new comedy for the BBC. I suppose that really, I was very angry at that time about the way the world was and doing the stand-up was cathartic, I never really wanted to be the guy writing 'jokes' per se or doing Live At The Apollo. So yeah, I got out of it because I was tired of being told I'd never become famous and/or rich doing it the way I was doing it, and I didn't want to change the way I was doing it. I still dabble from time-to-time, some friends are doing a sketch show in November and I'm gonna do a set afterwards, etc, but it's not really serious anymore because I just don't have the energy.
And, to each their own, but for me Hicks is the master. The great thing about comedy as an art form is that it can, when done properly, shine a light on the world and make you totally re-examine something you took completely for granted, it can literally make you sit bolt upright and turn your head around. Hicks did that better than anybody, for me. That's my main problem with the Peter Kay, Michael McIntyre school, they have this awesome platform and they use it to do jokes about the drawer in your house that's full of old batteries and plugs, or gameshows from the 80s.