What drew you to standup comedy?
In my family’s bar in Spain we had satellite TV for the football and I used to watch the late-night comedy shows. I became obsessed. I illustrated comics as a kid, wrote funny plays in school and was always trying to make friends and strangers laugh. When I moved to the UK for film school, the laughs I got from short films or presentations was more important to me than the grades. I graduated and worked three jobs in Swansea – as an usher in a cinema, a sales assistant in a carpet shop and a singer/guitarist in bars. One of my regular gigs was performing music at the end of a comedy night and it blew my mind that people could just do standup.
Can you recall a gig so bad it’s now funny?
A Christmas show where the audience was made up of maybe eight different staff parties. Before showtime, we’re sitting backstage and hear a lot of commotion in the main room … booing and shouting. The manager explained that the chef hadn’t turned up that day and the audience, who had been at the venue since 5pm, had not been fed. In an attempt to appease them, the venue had handed out drink tokens. So we now had to entertain 200 people who had been drinking heavily for four hours on empty stomachs. Also, there had been a power cut, meaning the stage was in total darkness. A woman fell down some stairs, a guy was sick all over his group’s table and somehow the audience had got hold of a bunch of glow-in-the-dark plastic whistles. It sounded like a war at a rave with referees. We just took it in turns to go on stage and die in the dark.
Best heckle?
I was about 40 minutes into a family friendly show on a cruise ship, and a little girl in the front kept whispering to her uncle. I acknowledged the distraction and chatted to them a bit. Her name was Bonnie and she was four years old. I asked what she’d been whispering, and she replied: “When’s the show going to start?” Devastating.
What’s the best part of gigging on a cruise ship?
Waking up in a different port each day is quite fun, but it’s no holiday; I typically do seven shows per cruise. The best thing is getting to do the late, adult-only show on the last night. All the other sets are clean material, and even though I take the piss, there’s a formality and an expectation to the whole experience of a cruise ship. That all goes out the port hole on the late show. It feels very inappropriate to say some of the things I do in such plush settings, which is ace.
What was it like growing up in Spain and Wales?
I talk a lot about the mix on stage – I’ve got Spanish, Welsh, Irish, Moroccan and German in my family. It’s like a political summit where we’re trying to figure out how to most effectively wind up the English. I definitely developed my sense of humour to win people round when I was younger, but flipping back and forth between Spain and Wales growing up, never really fitting in, made me resilient.
Who is your comedy hero?
I love Arj Barker. He really packs a lot of variety into his act. He has a distinct persona on stage that frames his work, he sometimes plays dumb or ignorant, but it all facilitates the laugh. There are super sharp jokes, even the silly stuff. I’d never imitate another comic on stage, but I definitely aspire to write jokes as tight as he does.
You’re headlining the season finale of Live at the Apollo
It’s such a buzz, walking out from behind that iconic sign as it lifts up when they blast smoke and the lights hit your face. It’s a dream come true, and I was just trying to take it all in. There’s a big red clock at the front of the stage so you can stick to your set length. It must have been going well, because I had to tell the audience to stop laughing as I was running out of time. Telling more than 3,000 people to shut up is a career high.
Any bugbears from the world of comedy
Snobbishness about audiences, venues or acts. There’s enough room for everyone.
What advice would you give to an aspiring standup?
Write way more than you need, travel far and wide, gig as much as possible. Also, watch comedy – live, online, TV, everything. Soak it up. Professional and new. Comedy is always changing and so are audiences. It pays to be aware of what else is going on. If you’re doing a gig, watch all the other acts on the bill, see how they did and how the audience reacted to them. Keep going and don’t focus on anyone else’s success. Most importantly, have fun and watch out for Bonnie, she’s vicious.
