Not that his sexuality had been a secret, but it wasn\u2019t something he\u2019d platformed, either, until a young man he knew was killed in a targeted homophobic attack on Clapham Common. Two men were sent to jail for his murder. <\/p>\n
The following year, his documentary on homophobia in the black British community and Jamaica, Batty Man, won a Royal Television Society Award and was nominated for a Bafta.<\/p>\n
Australia was still debating same-sex marriage, already legalised in New Zealand, when Amos toured there in 2017. That made it into his set, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven South Africa has gay marriage,\u201d he told the crowd. \u201cAnd they\u2019re marginally more racist than you!\u201d<\/p>\n
A decade ago, his touchstones were Brexit, the first Donald Trump presidency, a worldwide financial crisis and a backlash against immigration. It\u2019s disconcerting to consider how little the landscape has changed.<\/p>\n
These days, however, he\u2019s less overtly political \u2013 the kind of feel-good performer whose stories come with a twitch of the lips and a wink to the audience so everyone\u2019s in on the joke.<\/p>\n
Take his classic gag about bowing to the Queen at a post-show meet-and-greet, for example: \u201cI was this close to licking the back of her head and putting it on an envelope.\u201d <\/p>\n
People didn’t know what to make of Amos when he emerged on the comedy scene. ‘No one on television looked or sounded like me.’<\/p>\n
The ground literally shook the last time Amos performed in New Zealand. In 2016, he was on stage in Wellington when an earthquake struck. The audience didn\u2019t flinch.<\/p>\n
After a long absence from Aotearoa, the 58-year-old will be doing some homework before he flies in from Sydney with his new show, Now We\u2019re Talking, which opens at the NZ International Comedy Festival<\/a> next week.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the first things I\u2019ll do is look at the news to see what\u2019s happening and maybe weave some of that in, so I can come with an outsider\u2019s perspective and point out things you might not have noticed that I find funny,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n This time, Trump won\u2019t get a look in. \u201cI want people to come to my show who don\u2019t necessarily think like me, who have different backgrounds in terms of race, education, religion, economics and age. <\/p>\n \u201cI want my comedy to transcend all those barriers, so I make a conscious effort not to talk about Trump saying this or that. I mean, we\u2019ve all heard it, we all know it. The war in the Middle East \u2026 People have come to watch a comedy show. They\u2019ve not come to watch a man ranting about the cost of fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n An evocation of his 70s childhood, before the shoutiness of social media, Now We\u2019re Talking celebrates laughter\u2019s ability to unite people and help us cope during times of stress and anxiety.<\/p>\n Amos, who\u2019s done a deep dive into the science of this, reckons the ability to laugh \u2013 and make others laugh on purpose \u2013 is a distinctly human phenomenon.<\/p>\n \u201cBabies learn to laugh before they can speak,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s how we interact with other human beings who don\u2019t necessarily share the same language or culture as we do.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s something inside us that connects us all. And let\u2019s try not to forget that, because we live in a world where there is a lot of noise. A lot of talking and not enough listening.\u201d <\/p>\n Between tours, Amos lives in Wimbledon, a posh suburb in Southeast London, and is a regular guest on TV shows such as QI, Live at the Apollo and Have I Got News for You.<\/p>\n In July, he has a short-form podcast coming out called Me, I Blame the Parents, talking with six other comedians whose parents migrated to the UK as young adults. Among them is Baroness Ayesha Hazarika, a political commentator and former Labour Party advisor from Scotland whose Muslim parents emigrated from India.<\/p>\n Amos was 13 when he first went to Nigeria and was a regular visitor until borders closed during the Covid pandemic. As a child, meeting his parents\u2019 families and being surrounded by people who looked like him was overwhelming. \u201cIt blew my mind,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was this unconditional, unspoken love and embracement. <\/p>\n \u201cBut then, once that first wave of euphoria disappears, you suddenly realise you don\u2019t speak the language, your mannerisms are completely different, you can\u2019t stand the heat. You don\u2019t quite fit in there, either.\u201d<\/p>\n The title of his 2012 memoir, I Used to Say My Mother Was Shirley Bassey, is a reference to the legendary Welsh singer, whose father was Nigerian. At primary school in South London, Amos was the only black kid in his class, and she was massively popular at the time.<\/p>\n By his teens, he\u2019d become less self-conscious about standing out. \u201cI distinctly remember wearing shoulder pads, stonewashed jeans and massive hooped earrings,\u201d he says, with a laugh. <\/p>\n \u201cI thought I looked amazing! Every Saturday night, we used to go to a nightclub in Vauxhall called Dance Wicked. Those same people are still my friends to this day.\u201d <\/p>\n It sounds like another one of his gags, but Amos really did study criminal justice at polytech before giving stand-up a go. His parents, loving but overprotective, saw education as a form of armour for their children in a world that hadn\u2019t always welcomed them.<\/p>\n \u201cThey can take away your accommodation, they can take away your job, they can take away your spirit,\u201d Amos remembers them telling him. \u201cBut if you\u2019ve got a degree, nobody can take that away from you.\u201d<\/p>\n He finished his degree, but the office job didn\u2019t stick. In 2001, he made his debut at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and by the end of that decade, he had his own TV show.<\/p>\n Through his sideline as an actor, he\u2019s portrayed everyone from Jimi Hendrix and Nelson Mandela to the Soul Train conductor in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and the drunken Cockney dustman Alfred Doolittle in My Fair Lady.<\/p>\n A small but memorable highlight was playing one of Nurse Ratched\u2019s orderlies in an acclaimed 2004 production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest on the West End. \u201cI got to beat up Christian Slater every night,\u201d he says, of the US film star cast in the lead role.<\/p>\n Comedy is constantly evolving, says Amos, who\u2019s doing a play at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year called Eleven and a Half Angry Men. <\/p>\n In 2007, he hosted a documentary called Penis Envy, with the help of actors from Puppetry of the Penis, naked rugby players and men willing to experiment with penis-enlarging treatments. <\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t think that would fly now. Still, he rubbishes the idea that modern sensitivities have diluted a comedian\u2019s sting.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people who used to be the butt of the jokes are now the people telling the jokes,\u201d he says. \u201cThe playing field is levelling out and not everyone likes that, you see. <\/p>\n \u201cI hear all the time that the world is too woke, that no one can take a joke anymore. No, no. You can absolutely say what you want. The difference is your motivation. You want to do a racist, homophobic joke? By all means. Do it and see what happens. But why would you want to do that?\u201d<\/p>\nAmos as Sir Benjamin Backbite in a 2009 production of ‘The School For Scandal’ at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where he’s been a regular for more than two decades. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
Curtain call at the opening night of ‘My Fair Lady’ at the London Coliseum in 2022. Amos played Alfred Doolittle. Photo\/ Getty Images<\/p>\n