It's the time of year where comedians take an honest look at their careers.

Late January is all about the Self Assessment for those of us who've managed to resist the joys of doing it since the tax year ended last April - and you can perfectly understand the procrastination. Submitting that online return can be a moment of intense cognitive dissonance for many self-employed people, as you figure out your income for the whole year, all at once. Nobody wants to be hit by an unexpectedly big tax bill, but even worse is a 'gross annual income' figure so low that you take a long hard look at your life choices afterwards. Again.

Now, choosing to ditch the day job and become a full-time performer should be one of the great moments in a stand-up's life, and being able to make any money from doing something you love is pretty special. But for those of us who follow numerous comics on social media, it's apparent that even well-established names are hardly flush with cash. When your career year revolves around an event as potentially expensive and unpredictable as the Edinburgh Fringe, for starters, it's hard to plan ahead with any certainty.

One thing that often crops up in comedians' online comments - as jokes or just general gloom - is the unlikelihood of ever owning a home, unless they give up and do something much more secure instead. Let's imagine a self-employed comic we'll call No Deposit Fred - not to be confused with casino comparison site NoDepositFriend - who's been making a steady living if not saving loads, and wants to get on the property ladder. He'd probably make everyone laugh in the mortgage lenders' office as much as he does onstage, unfortunately.

It's sobering, and a circuit comedian's working hours mean that they're also much more likely to regularly stumble upon daytime property programmes in which an overly pleased-with-themselves couple swan about in some sunnier country looking for a second home, despite voting for Brexit, and having probably been flown out by the production company even though they've got £900,000 to spend. Meanwhile the self-employed gagsmith is thinking of turning this into material while sitting in old pants in a shared flat eating someone else's beans out of a tin. That's showbiz.

So it's worth remembering this next time you're at a comedy club and feel the urge to heckle unhelpfully or talk loudly amongst yourselves or walk out halfway through someone's set. You're spoiling the comedian's enjoyment as much as the audience's, and for a club comic, that feeling of creative fulfilment - or just the joy of making people laugh - is often pretty much all they're getting out of it.

Still, that increasingly distant dream of owning a home now extends to those with decent jobs too, of course, particularly if that job is in a popular city. Not only that, but one newspaper report the other day suggested that up to a half of all jobs will be taken over by automated systems in the near future. So maybe comedians have made the right career choice after all, as that job is hard to automate: you can't imagine R2D2 knocking out the set-ups, punchlines and call-backs.

Then again, being a bit blue, he can at least bleep his own swear words.