How long do it take to be a comedian?

This question has come up over and over in the past few weeks. Rhonda (aussie veteran comic) reckons it takes 8 years to start to understand the job properly. I think it takes 10. Bill Maher was on iconoclasts with Clive Davis said 20 years to really feel comfortable. He compared it to being a gondolier, a journeyman always seeking to find the new depths to what he is doing. 

Having been in comedy walked away for a while and come back I realised that once  its in the blood you can never leave it. The more you do, the better you get, the more you realise that there is so much more you can discover. Not to put off any one thinking about doing stand up, it will take you a year or to to get consistent laughs. If that's all you want you can get it, if you want to really try and understand what comedy is (you never will) its a life choice, that to be honest you don't actually make. When you begin to hear in funny its fantastic and a curse that you will never shake.

Is this bollocks? No, I've talked to people who act and paint and write, they all say the same thing. When you decide to follow a particular arty path its a never ending journey. When I walked from comedy and went into acting I brought the performance skills I'd learned in stand up and soaked up all I could learn from the actors. Its the same thing. Like comics the actors do whatever play they are in the best way they know how to do it right now. I think the equivalent for a comic is when you realise that a joke is never finished, its the best it can be for now.

Any comic worth their salt doesn't really care about fame or money, its a by product of what we do, although money would be nice....

here's my poncy opinion. I have always felt that all art is the same thing, the attempt to bypass the conscious  mind and engage the emotional core. There you go Dad, that money spent on education not completely wasted. This idea is of course nigh on impossible to achieve, but its a lot of fun trying.