How did you decide to begin a career in comedy?
I decided to get into to stand up about 4 years before I actually did get into it. I spent years thinking about it and wanting to do it but never had the bottle or the guts to actually get on stage. I remember every New Years day; I use to say to myself, my New Years resolution this year is to do one gig. Every year, 12 months would go by and I wouldn't have done anything. It was only through being quite drunk one night as a student and entering an X-Factor/Stars in their Eyes competition as Mick Jagger, with a cucumber down my pants and a wig on dancing round, then finishing second, gave me the confidence to go on a do stand up. Someone at the competition said to me "I thought that was great" (I though that was very generous of him, as it was patch at best) "I run my own comedy night, do you want to do a gig?" I said "yeah, yeah, yeah!" 'cos I was absolutely smashed. The next day I got a text from him saying 'the gig was the next evening and to please bring as many people as possible'. My bottle just went. But I thought, well, I'm in now I wont get another chance like this so I quickly wrote some jokes down and proceeded to 'cack' my pants before the gig.
The gig was awful, the guy was the compère and he was just dreadful - that really gave me confidence. That's a common theme for a lot of new acts when you're starting out, the amount of bad acts there are on the circuit really does inspire you as much as the good acts. You think 'well, if they're doing it, then I can do this, I can have a go'. His comperering, he was dreadful, so as soon as he brought me on, despite my first 10 minutes being pretty, pretty shocking compared to him I think the audience were made up he was off the stage! So, I thank him for that!
Where do you get your ideas?
I get my ideas from all over the place really. I always keep a notebook on me. That's something I'd say to any new comic - always keep a notebook and pen with you, or save it in your phone. I do this on nights out, but make sure you don't text them to people! Sometimes, I just sit down and try to write jokes, which can work for some people; others have to be inspired by stuff that happens in their life. For the better-constructed one-liners, it's a case of sitting down and getting the word order right.
How do you turn ideas in to material?
To turn Ideas into material, you've got to try them out on stage. That's the only way to do it. Whatever you thinks funny, will only be funny if an audience finds it funny. Work out what you're going to say and go to a gig and say it. You can have a joke that you thinks the most hilarious joke ever written, but until an audience finds it funny, it's rubbish. If you try out five new jokes, there's a good chance that four of them wont get laughs. But if one of them out of five gets a laugh, then you've got to look at the positive and say 'that's good'. In the end, you have to slowly build up so you've got all the gags you know work.
There's no such thing as a bad joke. There are jokes that I've done which have died continuously and I've gone away, tweaked the words, moved the order around or just added a bit more delivery and all of a sudden it's a cracking piece, then you're riffing and you're coming up with other things on stage that you never thought of the past 12 months.
Did you say 'riffing'?
Yes, I like to 'riff' when there's no one in the house...
What was your first 10-minute set like?
My first 10 minute set was very patchy. There were no jokes in it. I wrote loads of opinions and ideas about things that were going on in the world and it wasn't funny. It was just me being angry. But I'm not a very angry person, I'm fairly friendly and happy. I think, as my favourite comedians at the time were Bill Hicks and Richard Pryor, I was trying to be like them, trying to change people's perceptions of the world. But, you've got to be really intelligent to do that to pull it off. So now, I just talk about things that I know, which is slightly less deep. I remember doing a bit about Christina Aguilera. All I was saying was "I hate her, she's rubbish". I had loads of mates in the audience and they were laughing, but it wasn't funny, it was just words. I got through it and my fly was down for the whole gig, which was dodgy, but it got a few laughs.
If your first gig wasn't that great, what made you carry on with comedy?
What made me carry on was the fact that I'd spent the best part of four or five years before that dreaming about getting on stage and never having the bottle to do it. As I'd made that first step I just thought 'Wow I've done this' and I was on a high for weeks. I didn't have a gig until three weeks after, but I was on such a high I thought I can't let this slip, I've got to keep the momentum going. I made myself a promise to spend time improving my set getting a good ten minutes, then a good 20 minutes then build from there. It's a slow process, but I just go my head down and got gigs. You find you enjoy it more the better you get as you get more laughs... hopefully!
What was your worst gig like?
My worst gig was three years ago and I was booed on stage. The compère said "this next act's from Liverpool!" and everyone went "BOO!" It wasn't friendly booing you sometimes get when you're a Scouse comic doing a gig in Manchester, this was hate-filled, horrible booing. They hated me. Before I got to the mic stand, I thought 'I'm going to die here', that probably didn't help the situation and I did. I absolutely died and there was people, not heckling, but chatting and saying 'come on, £3 for this'. I did the gig and when I left the stage someone ironically shouted "more!"...
