What\u2019s the opposite of an overnight success? Should we call Ian Smith a slow burner, a sleeper hit? The Yorkshireman\u2019s last two shows, both fantastic, were nominated for the Edinburgh comedy award, he has a popular Radio 4 series, Ian Smith is Stressed, and growing TV visibility. Now he\u2019s embarking on a second UK tour. But breakout success was a long time coming for the 37-year-old. \u201cI did my first gig when I was 17,\u201d he tells me over coffee in London, \u201cwhich I find horrific. It makes me feel old.\u201d<\/p>\n
What took him so long? Might one factor be that Smith\u2019s is a traditional brand of standup \u2013 fretful everyman sends up his own anxiety \u2013 in a culture that prizes the new and different? That can\u2019t be it, he says. \u201cBecause I had so many gimmicks! That was a big part of my standup.\u201d He cites the high-concept shows (comedy in a bath<\/a>; comedy on a bed) that made Tim Key\u2019s name. \u201cI loved standup with slightly theatrical set-pieces. That was my voice for four shows. I got a review that said, \u2018Ian substitutes writing jokes with standing on tables and shouting at people.\u2019 And it was fair enough. I went through a real standing-on-tables phase.\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t have loads going on in my life. I sometimes felt it was quite boring<\/p>\n But the world wasn\u2019t taking much notice. \u201cI didn\u2019t have an agent for a couple of years, and I did feel in the wilderness. But my shows kept getting better.\u201d Then one day, he says, \u201cI wanted to prove I could do a funny show without PowerPoint, set-pieces or gimmicks. And that became my most successful show.\u201d<\/p>\n Entitled Crushing<\/a>, it depicted the neurotic tizz Smith got himself into after a relationship breakup. Its follow-up, Foot Spa Half Empty<\/a>, addresses Smith\u2019s low sperm count, discovered when he and his partner began trying for a child. Neither show is remotely gimmicky. Quite the opposite: Smith ascribes their success to their actually addressing something meaningful about his experience of the world.<\/p>\n \u2018I only ever want to make it as stupid and silly as I can\u2019 \u2026 Smith. Photograph: Matt Stronge<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t used to have loads going on in my life,\u201d he says. \u201cI would sometimes feel it was quite boring. So I made a conscious effort to put myself out in the world, to live a more interesting or stressful life. Maybe I just started doing more stuff.\u201d This included visiting Bratislava with his hairdresser, where (as recounted in Crushing) he drove a tank over a car to vent his pent-up rage.<\/p>\n By cannibalising his fretfulness for comedy, Smith refined a persona to stand alongside those peevish titans of mouse-that-roared comedy Rhod Gilbert<\/a> and Victor Meldrew. \u201cThe best comedy,\u201d he says, \u201ccomes from negative feelings: stress or anxiety or fear. Then you tell people about those feelings, and they realise they also get stressed about things they shouldn\u2019t really worry about, and it\u2019s all a big release. That\u2019s where the best stuff comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe so \u2013 but it still took a deep breath for Smith to address his fertility struggles on stage. \u201cIt was a hard decision,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I was strong-armed into it by the situation. Because if I\u2019m writing a show, it\u2019s going to be about things I\u2019m stressed about in that moment. I would have struggled to motivate myself to write \u2018self-service checkouts are really annoying\u2019 when, really, I wouldn\u2019t have cared about that at the time.\u201d Unlike with his breakup show, written in retrospect, Smith wrote Foot Spa Half Empty throughout the spring of this year, while the process (the anxiety, the trips to the sperm clinic) was unfolding in real time.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was like a live coping mechanism,\u201d he says. \u201cWhich some people would say is not healthy. Comedians often tell audiences, \u2018Don\u2019t worry about me. I\u2019ve processed this and everything\u2019s OK.\u2019 Whereas I had a line in the show \u2013 which I eventually dropped \u2013 that went, \u2018I want to let you know I haven\u2019t processed any of this! I\u2019m stressed about it right now!\u2019 I thought that was a bold way to tell people this is an ongoing thing. But it can take audiences away from being able to laugh at you.\u201d<\/p>\n Laughter, after all, is what Smith is in it for \u2013 on stage, on screen (he has sitcoms in development), or on his popular Northern News podcast with Yorkshire compatriot Amy Gledhill<\/a>. This is emphatically not a comic who classifies his anxieties as trauma or mental health. \u201cIt would be easy in this new show to say something sad or profound about how I feel about the [infertility] situation,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I always feel the obligation to be as funny as possible. Whether I\u2019m stressed about a serious subject or a trivial one, I only ever want to make it as stupid and silly as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s an approach that has got him, finally, where he wants to be in comedy: a slow burner who has finally caught fire. \u201cI can be full of self-doubt,\u201d says Smith, \u201cand you could chart my career doubt by how many times I would Google \u2018law conversion courses\u2019 in a year. But I haven\u2019t done that in a while now.\u201d<\/p>\n Ian Smith: Foot Spa Half empty is at Soho theatre, London<\/a>, 25-29 November. Then tours in the new year<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the opposite of an overnight success? 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