Euch. Can’t face getting up. Or showering. Or talking to people. Actually, it’s not that I can’t face talking to people; I have got nothing to say. Out of talk, thought, hope. I have started viewing people weirdly. Suspiciously. When I come into work, I hide in a tiny booth. Everything seems hopeless. I have got the Brexit blues. Can’t even watch football. Not that there’s any point. Even the England team has got the Brexit blues.

Euch. Politics, economics, racism, globalisation, little England, Britain for the British, Cameron, Johnson, Gove, Corbyn. Euch, euch, euch. And nobody seems to remember that Jo Cox was killed for this.

Who can give me some hope? Make me believe? In anything. The tiniest bit of cheer would do. Just a single laugh.

Ayesha Hazarika: there must be a joke somewhere. Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

Ayesha Hazarika was adviser to Harriet Harman when she was Labour’s interim leader, and has now gone back to her old job as standup comic. (I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere, but it has passed me by.) You’re a comedian, I say – can you make me laugh about what is happening to the country? “Can I make you laugh?” she asks, buying herself a few seconds. She tells me about her posh, Labour-voting friends who need to smell the coffee, and wake up to the fact that lots of people in the country don’t feel how they do about migration. “This referendum holds up a mirror to how fucked our society is.” You’re not cheering me up, I say. “One of my friends said: ‘My heart is Cumbrian.’” She bursts out laughing. Cumbrian? What’s so funny about having a Cumbrian heart? “No, she says, “Umbrian. It’s like a cry from the Blairite heartlands. ‘My heart is Umbrian!’” Umbrian, I say, despondently. I get it – that’s where the political classes have second homes, all those people who don’t understand how the rest of us live. “I’ve got a lot of lovely dear friends who I adore, but I just want to say: ‘Get a grip’.” Oh, I say, thanks for trying to cheer me up, Ayesha, you’ve failed miserably.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll keep trying.”

Philippa Perry: despairing with a nun. Photograph: Fiona Shaw for the Guardian

Yes, of course it’s a terrible time, says psychotherapist Philippa Perry, but you can’t let the negativity win. OK, I say, teach me how to be positive. “Well, what I’m finding helpful is separating our very worst imagined scenarios from actual fact, so if you actually talk to people … people are actually talking at bus stops and I’m finding that quite uplifting. I had a lovely conversation with the nun from down the road. She was despairing, and we despaired together. And I think we both felt a bit better for it.”

Is that the best you can do, Philippa, I say – despair with a nun? “We’ve got to try to understand where all the hate has come from. That gives us a way forward with it. We were saying the hate comes from austerity and hopelessness. We’re back to the 1930s and trying to find someone to blame for being poor, like the Germans and the Jews. The first stage of any sort of self-improvement is awareness of where we are in the present. I heard the most appalling story that a friend told me. He’s a German scientist; been here for 20 years. And his daughter was called ‘Hitler’s child’ at school. You just despair.”

Thank you for trying to cheer me up, Philippa, I say.

I receive a text from Ayesha. “At least George Osborne is not going to be our next PM …” it says. Whatever.

Bridget Christie: people look at each other differently. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

I ask comedian Bridget Christie if she has got a Brexit joke for me. “I’m distraught,” she says. “When you’re on the tube, people are looking at each other differently. The EDL used to put their hoodies up to say racist stuff, but there’s been such a huge social and cultural shift, they don’t need to now.”

Oh God, you’re just making me feel worse, I tell her.

“Sorry, mate. What the fuck must people think? I mean, my brother lives in Sweden. He’s like: ‘What have you done?’”

Thanks for trying to make me feel better, Bridget, I say.

I receive another text from Ayesha. “Imagine how rough Tom Watson’s post-Glasto comedown must have been!!!” Yes, imagine.

I tell existentialist philosopher Andy Martin that I am existentially nauseous. “Well, I understand that,” says the author of The Boxer and the Goalkeeper: Sartre Vs Camus. He asks if he can put one thing straight. “The true existentialist would refuse to sign up or be identified as one.” But, he adds, the existentialists are just the kind of thinky dudes you need at a time like this.

So you can give me some hope? Ah, he says, not so simple. “The serious existentialist would not countenance the concept of hope because it sounds religious.” Fortunately, he doesn’t take himself too seriously and does do a nice line in optimism. “Now there is a positive way of looking at this; the type of existentialism that is particularly seductive dates from the second world war and the struggle against Nazi Germany; the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre in its denial of history. Its core argument is we are not constrained today by what happened yesterday, and therefore the horizon is open. Simone de Beauvoir made the same argument around the same time; it was very much a joint enterprise. So if you’re looking for a slight silver lining, instead of waking up with a hangover, the existentialists would say: ‘I’ve woken up, I’m reborn, clean slate, I’m coming again.’”

I feel momentarily cheered till I see that the pro-remain rallies have been cancelled for fear of violence. Not quite the clean slate Jean-Paul promised. (No wonder he changed his mind about existentialism.)

Alexei Sayle: like the Thatcher years. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

Veteran comedian Alexei Sayle emails to say: “Everybody’s acting like this has never happened before, but to me it feels very like the Thatcher years. On the one side, half the country backing a project based on lies and petty-mindedness, and the other half angry as hell but also attached to something that is paternalistic and authoritarian, and the left shooting itself in both feet, the arms and the head. The arts offer consolation and advice in such times. For those who want the referendum re-run, this a poem Brecht wrote (but then kept secret):

The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th June

The Secretary of the Writers Union

Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee

Stating that the people

Had forfeited the confidence of the government

And could win it back only

By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier

In that case for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?”

Ayesha sends another text. “I was so tired and emosh, I said ‘general erection’ live on CNN!!!!!” Aw, bless; she really is trying.

I thank Ayesha , and tell her it’s funny. But not funny enough. I find myself on the phone to the Samaritans – a lovely woman called Debbie with a warm Brummy accent answers.

“Can you help?” I say. “I feel terrible about the world and society turning in on itself and everything’s so horrid. Could you just give me a bit of advice?”

“I’m really sorry, but Samaritans doesn’t actually give advice. We listen to your feelings of despair and distress and suicidal feelings.”

Have other people phoned up about this?

“You’re my first one so far but I’m not surprised,” Debbie says.

Could you think of anything that might make me feel better?

“Make things better?” she says, gently incredulous. “What, the country?” She laughs. “I’m a Samaritan, mate, I’m not a miracle worker.”

For the first time in days I find myself laughing. Are you feeling like that at all? I ask.

“Yeah, a bit. Definitely. You’re not alone, let’s put it that way. It’s pretty bad. It’s created some bad feelings. Yeah, I think bad times are ahead, to be honest.”

Thanks, Debbie, I say, for trying.

“All right. I hope you feel a bit better soon when it all settles down.”

I think it might get worse, I say.

“Yeah, yeah. Hang on in there. Bye. Take care. See ya.” In a strange way, she has made me feel a bit better.