Who did you look up to when you were starting out as a comedian?
I wanted to learn everything at once, so I found as many DVDs and videos of standups as I could. The people who stood out were the ones doing it a bit differently. Obviously, the standard answer is Stewart Lee. When I saw his 41st Best Standup Ever show, I realised you can do anything when you\u2019re up there. People like Rhod Gilbert, Lee Mack and Noel Fielding, in the early days before they were famous, also blew my mind.<\/p>\n
How would you describe your style of comedy?
I do one-liners. I\u2019m a joke teller. A gagsmith.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s your process of writing new material?
I\u2019m quite good at spotting wordplay in life. I had a conversation with a friend once and he said, \u201cI change my Facebook password from time to time.\u201d And I said: \u201cThat\u2019s pointless. That\u2019s the same word.\u201d My brain went straight to the wordplay. Then I\u2019ll write that in my notes. When I\u2019ve got maybe 10 notes with ideas, that\u2019s when I sit down and craft the jokes.<\/p>\n
Can you recall a gig so bad it\u2019s now funny?
Coventry Showcase Cinema ran a comedy night but it\u2019s a terrible setup because everyone\u2019s in comfy chairs and too relaxed. The first one I did was going terribly from the start. A heckler kept piping up every so often to tell me when another audience member had left the room. When I finished, I thought, \u201cWell, at least I\u2019ll never have to do this gig ever again.\u201d I got booked for it again the next week.<\/p>\n
Any standout gigs from your career?
The first time I did Glastonbury festival, to a full tent of maybe a thousand people. That was the most I\u2019d ever played to. I happened to be on before Josh Widdicombe so everyone was piling into the tent early to watch him, so I played to that massive crowd.<\/p>\n
The first time I did a tour show was quite something because people had actually come specifically to see me. That just blew my mind. Now with the new tour, I just did Nottingham Playhouse. Halfway through the show I came out of myself a bit. I was like: there are 700 people here to see my show. It\u2019s just amazing. I\u2019m so lucky.<\/p>\n
How would you describe your show, Jest to Impress?
It\u2019s for people who like jokes \u2013 one-liners, gags, wordplay. The beauty of comedy is there are so many different styles and there\u2019s a lot of brilliant pieces of work out there where comedians are tackling the issues of the world. That\u2019s not what this is. This is where you can come for an hour and forget about the issues of the world, enjoy the silliness and have a laugh for the sake of having a laugh.<\/p>\n
On your podcast you discuss jokes that haven\u2019t come off \u2026
One of the reasons I do it is because you could have a joke that technically works but doesn\u2019t for an audience \u2013 and there are many different reasons why. I\u2019ve got one that is a bit niche: \u201cI was driving the other day, flicked on the radio, started listening to Magic, which was rubbish because it\u2019s quite a visual artform.\u201d I found audiences sometimes took a while to connect the dots \u2013 Magic FM is quite London-centric. When you\u2019re going around the country, if you say Magic, they straight away jump to tricks and spells. So that\u2019s one that I like but I can\u2019t do because it doesn\u2019t work consistently.<\/p>\n