Defining My Comedy
Since I've set this website up, I've been getting a cock-load of queries from all over the world (and beyond?) Some of them are people saying I can unlock a Nigerian Princess for a small administrative fee. Others advise me that I can make a ton of dollars cutting pieces of me out so they can be transplanted into a fading Swiss politician. I also heard from a guy who was about to have several thousand volts ran through them by the state of Oregon for "throwing shade" in the general direction of the Senator's daughter and was looking for a correspondent to write erotica for him.
There are also some people who're keen to know a bit more about my second life as a Stand Up comedian, trawling the back rooms and basements of London. I've struggled to nail a definition down, so I decided to work up a list of subjects that I won't joke about in order to help you better understand the colour of the shit I'm peddling.
What I won't do
- Jokes about being Northern. If you've ever seen me on stage then you'll know I carry around a thick accent that means I have to wear several jumpers with my jokes stitched into them so they can act as a real-life subtitles. It's not that I don't think there isn't a treasure trove of material either; my home town of Bradford has reality TV star George Galloway in charge, who sailed into power with a cigar smoking, Indesign competent election campaign. Once rich with textile money, Bradford is now dilapidated and all the grand old buildings are being allowed to slowly dissolve in on themselves. But, you know, my mum lives there.
- Racial commentary. My only real observation is that black people, on average, seem much more impressed by street magic than white people. When shown that their phone has been placed inside a glass bottle, there's lots of running around on the street and yelling. White people just seem to want their phone back with a look that says an allotted delivery window has been missed by Homebase and now you've got a ton of slate just sitting on your grass verge unattended.
- Pauline Quirk. Need to give this particular subject a bit of a rest. You know how it is; you're young, you set up a fake Twitter account and after a bottle of red wine you end up having a small room in Scotland Yard, full of people working to track you down.
If you wanted me to define my act I'd say that, much like some of the side streets in Amsterdam...I'm niche. And in terms of the physical symptoms you'd expect to encounter when seeing a comedy show, you'd be likely to suffer from streaming eyes and an aching jaw from laughing so much but the best you're going to get from me is a strange secretion from a gland you never knew you had. And I don't know what this stuff is but moths love it.
Yes. I guess it is lots of stuff about moths.