When my grandad was on his deathbed, my grandma gently whispered to him that I had come to visit. But he was off his tits on painkillers, and didn’t understand what she’d said, so just started ranting about me as though I wasn’t there.
“None of us could ever understand why he became a comedian,” he opined at one point. “How could such a shy, quiet, little boy be a comedian?”
This was a sobering reality check in the midst of an already emotional situation, but he was bang on the money, actually.
The kind of shows I’ve ended up making – largely me pretending to be a jumped-up peacocking egomaniac (where do I get my character ideas?) who ends up capering around in his pants – are a long way from the silent introvert I had been for much of the first half of my life.
I owe my entire career to a couple of comedians at uni who called my bluff and decided my shyness contained multitudes – and challenged me to try stand-up. I never looked back. So, here’s how it all played out…
MY FIRST GIG
When I first tried stand-up, I knew almost nothing about it. I had planned fuck all. I got onstage and said “My socks have ‘Thursday’ written on them – how cool is that?”
Later I downed a one-litre bottle of what looked like Smirnoff Ice, but then reassured the audience that I had decanted the contents so that it actually contained Lilt. I’m staring at both of those sentences trying to work out what I thought was funny about them, but they killed. Something cracked in my psyche after that. I had made an attempt to go onstage with nothing other than the vague idea that what my brain had come up with might be funny, and it had worked.
Past the point of no return, as the Phantom of the Opera might say (if he insisted on only communicating through the titles of songs from that show he’s in).
SNAPE IT OFF
I’m playing Draco Malfoy in an unofficial Harry Potter parody at a sold-out Leicester Square Theatre (a couple of years before, y’know, this entire fandom became something hard to mine for comedic value). The show was on my birthday and I had to sing a version of ‘Shake It Off’ entitled ‘Snape It Off’.
At this point, I still really struggled to let myself cut loose onstage, but I thought “Fuck it, it’s my birthday, I’m gonna belt this.” Five hundred people really loved it, and sang “Happy birthday” back to me.
I remember this as a sea change in my own burgeoning self-confidence. To this day, I think Malfoy is a really misunderstood character. The kid just wants to dance! His body is a cage!
MR FRUIT SALAD
Maybe you had to be there to understand why a show that involved me wearing a ratty old fake beard and a pair of sunglasses and spending most of the show dancing to elevator music and singing about the different flavours of wine ended up being a really big Fringe hit that won awards and made people cry, but it did happen.
This was the first show I made by properly collaborating with other people, and surprise surprise, it did better than everything I’d done up until then.
It had been a huge learning curve cracking the contents of my head open onstage in the first place, but for the first time I’d learned to actually share it with other people in a vulnerable way, and ask for their help in making sense of it. It was such a transformation in the way I make work, and handed me my entire career, really.
THE DREAM FACTORY
I’m recording my own original sitcom for BBC Radio 4 starring comedy heroes like Desiree Burch, Stevie Martin and Kiell Smith-Bynoe. It is, ironically for a show all about dreams and how messy and awful it would be if they became real, a dream come true.
I’d grown up obsessed with narrative scripted TV sitcoms like Alan Partridge and Peep Show, and collaborating with such an amazing group of people to make a sitcom for a major broadcaster felt like something that shy silent kid might never have dared to hope might happen. Hey, snap out of it, kid. Life ain’t so terrifying!
My latest show, You Wait. Time Passes, is a daft, chaotic blend of philosophical character comedy and absurdist nonsense, and had a smash hit run at last year’s Fringe. It’s now touring the UK until June, and returning to the Soho Theatre for a further four nights in April.
