Paul McCaffrey can still remember the first successful comedy routine he wrote, even though it was over a decade ago. “It was about cash machines and how frustrating it was when you were queuing to use one.”

It went down so well at his early gigs he ended up doing it a few years later on television on Russell Howard’s Good News.

The routine is typical of McCaffrey’s instantly accessible approach to comedy. He is a classic observational storyteller talking about the irritations in his life in a way that everyone can relate to. He is not a “high status” comedian. In fact, he is more of a “lemon”, which also happens to be the title of his latest show.

“It’s what I’ve been called quite a few times in my life. I’m just a bit of a lemon, an idiot,” chuckles the cheerful 45-year-old. He gives me recent example of why he might have earnt this nickname. “I was sat down eating beans on toast and I could see flames. I thought that one of my neighbours were having a bonfire, so I watched it for three minutes and then realised I’d left the hob on and put the oven glove on it. I’d just spent the last three minutes watching the reflection of my burning oven glove in the kitchen window!”

McCaffrey is on a roll. In December 2019 he appeared on BBC2’s Live at the Apollo, a show he’s always wanted to do. “I got a phone call out of the blue. It was surreal. I’ve had so much time to imagine doing it and then the next thing you’re at the Apollo, standing at the back of the stage, you hear your name, the screen goes up and this is it.”

It was not his first time at the Apollo. “Fortunately for me, I had already played that room. I did it about seven times supporting Kevin Bridges and twice with Sean Lock. I was still nervous, I was really worried my hand was going to shake, and then as soon as I got out there, a sudden calmness just came over me.”

It might have taken a while to get his big break but looking back maybe he was destined for a comedy career. He grew up in Winchester and confesses that at Kings’ School – also Jack Dee’s old comprehensive – he was the class clown. “My mum threw all my school reports away. I think she was ashamed of them! I can remember my head of year’s comments at the bottom of one of them. He just wrote in capital letters. I DESPAIR. I was a very naughty kid.”

After leaving school he had various jobs, running a bar in north London, working in call centres and selling clothes in Next, but he tended to get the sack for mucking about. Eventually he decided to do a drama course and then at the age of 31 decided to try stand-up.

McCaffrey had always been a huge comedy fan. “I remember my dad letting me stay up to watch The Young Ones. And then there was The Office. I think Ricky Gervais inspired a generation of comedians. He’s like the Oasis of comedy.”

He cites Jill Edwards, who runs a famous comedy course in Brighton and taught greats including Romesh Ranganathan as his biggest influence. But supporting major acts such as Bridges and Lock has also been essential.

“It’s like training with the national team. To watch Kevin or Sean up close, and see the work ethic, stagecraft. I learnt a lot by osmosis. I’d just watch them every night on tour.”

When he toured with Kevin Bridges there was one particular occasion when he really realised how big some venues are. “I think I did five nights at the 3Arena in Dublin with Kevin and then afterwards we had the day off and went to watch U2 there. And I’m like, ‘I’m glad we’ve done it this way round. I don’t want to watch U2, and then think I’ve got to go up there tomorrow’.”

It is no surprise that McCaffrey went to a rock gig on a rare night off. He is massive music fan and on tour he spends his days, when not playing golf, rummaging through the racks in second-hand record stores. “I do stuff onstage about being in my 40s but feeling like I’m 18. I’m the oldest raver in town, but I think people of a certain age can relate to that.”

Life on the road has helped him to master the skills to conquer any crowd. “I’m there to entertain and provide a bit of escapism. It’s a sales job, ultimately. Comedy is the most results-driven thing I’ve ever done. You can’t coast. I gig five or six nights a week and you can’t just turn up and phone it in.” Forget queuing at that cash machine, comedy fans should be queuing for Paul McCaffrey.

Paul McCaffrey’s tour ‘Lemon’ starts in Aldershot on February 6 and finishes in Newcastle on June 9. It arrives at the Lowry, Salford Quays on 9 May 2020. Visit website for full tour details.

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Ivo Graham disarmingly describes himself as a “young posh comedian whose shows are plummy-voiced navel-gazing”, but is too modest to mention that he recently made an impressive debut on Have I Got News For You, was the youngest ever winner of the So You Think You’re Funny competition in 2009, and that his latest show The Game of Life was nominated for the prestigious Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2019.

But he says there has been no grand plan for his career – “I take it as it comes” – but given his past shows’ content, it was perhaps inevitable that the new one would be about becoming a father for the first time. As the 28-year-old wryly points out: “My previous shows have had a trajectory of how my domestic and romantic life have evolved: not having a girlfriend/having a girlfriend/we’ve moved in together/we’re thinking about having a baby. Thankfully we were lucky enough to have a baby [his daughter was born in early 2019] and this show followed.

“I was lucky that early on I tapped into a style of comedy describing what was going on in my life, and was able to find funny things to say about it. The Game of Life is about new parenthood and the life changes associated with it – a little bit of the mental process, the admin, and quite a lot of tangents.”

With typical self-deprecation, he explains: “My comedy comes from real life – with some exaggerated or conflated stories, admittedly – because I don’t have the imagination to write fictional characters, as I have found in my pretty disastrous ventures into scriptwriting.”

He says his comedy has been “finding a way to talk about the more relatable stuff as a way to offset the more privileged aspects of my life, which I took a little longer to work out how to do.” By privileged, he means that he was educated at Eton and Oxford. He weighs up the pros and cons of having gone to the school that has, with the election of Boris Johnson, provided 20 UK prime ministers.

“It’s given me a USP to play with and develop,” Graham says. “It was something I relished early on [he started performing stand-up aged 18] because it was a caricature that I could play with, with jokes about bullying, sexual tension or funny uniforms.

“Now that’s expanded to talking about the wider emotional and societal ramifications of going to that school. You know that you are operating in every sphere on a bedrock of good fortune – the education you have had, the contacts you have made, the inbuilt confidence. That’s why I find people complaining about privilege being a hindrance so distasteful because of course it helps.”

Does he feel he is expected to apologise for where he was educated? “It’s a bad time because the political situation is toxic, and a lot of the hot topics over the past few years have been to do with elites and the widening gaps in society.

“So yes, I feel a certain pressure to show at the very least I am aware of the negative feeling towards Eton and those who represent it.”

He doesn’t think he would ever become a political comic, though. “I’m a coward and a compromiser so I’ve never set out to write a political show because it would have to have a political conclusion. I’d much rather have a political tangent in the show.”

And there’s a delicious political tangent in The Game of Life, as Graham describes a bizarre meeting with the Prime Minister’s brother Jo, at – of all places – a boules tournament. A gift to a comic, surely?

“Well you say that, but it was quite late in the process of writing the show that I realised that this story would be in it. Then it occurred to me that it would fit into my awkward Eton shtick, and now it’s a bit of the show I love performing.”

While Graham has a loyal audience from his 10 years at the Edinburgh Fringe, he has also gained fans from the regular appearances he made on fellow comic Josh Widdicombe’s podcast and more latterly on Fighting Talk on BBC Radio 5 Live.

“I love sport and I think I talk a good game [on Fighting Talk],” he says, “and some fans come to the show on the back of that. I’ve recently started doing more Radio 4 stuff, too; I don’t know what the metrics are of who is in my audiences, but I’d love to see them.”

Graham is a Swindon Town supporter and he plans to see his team play if he can while on the road. “But it’s not always possible because of the tour schedule and baby-minding duties,” he says. Although if Swindon aren’t playing anywhere near a tour date, he would be quite happy to turn up to what he calls “random outings to watch a match, as I’m slowly working my way through the 92 clubs in the English Football and Premier Leagues. New grounds always feel like an adventure”.

His family – Graham is the eldest of three – appear quite a lot in his shows, albeit “in slightly blurred versions” of themselves. But, ever the polite young man, he says: “I wouldn’t want to reveal confidences. I suppose as one digs deeper into family life and relationships and how parenthood may put strain them, you have to be careful.

“My dad was a little bit disconcerted by my using his name in one routine. It’s stayed with me and if I’ve been tempted to do it again in a whimsical moment on stage, then I’m aware it can be a slippery slope.”

Mention of his dad prompts the question of why Graham was born in Tokyo, and he explains his father was working there in insurance, in risk assessment. He says drily: “My career is a risk he is still assessing.” One assumes not for much longer.

Ivo Graham: The Game of Life is at The Lowry, Salford Quays on 27 May 2020. See website for full tour details.

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This tour has Janey wielding a variety of talents, as she delivers the kind of forthright stand-up which has earned her a strong reputation on the comedy circuit and a loyal band of followers. But she will also be displaying her skills at improv, as she stands by a screen and narrates ad-libbed voice-overs of people (many of whom are today’s crop of politicians), giving them a heavy Scottish accent and inventing a story, many of which involve making soup for the community.

“The soup pot is very universal: if you’re in Australia, America, Brazil, France Germany or Alaska, and someone dies or gets married, people will make soup. The soup pot is the hub of the community. When somebody died near us when I was a kid, somebody would make the big soup pot so all the visitors had something warm to drink and eat. It’s part of us all being in it together. Of course, that was before people discovered they were gluten free and worried about being allergic to lentils.”

Janey first discovered that she could develop this new strand of her career on the night of the Scottish Independence vote in 2014. “I first did the voice-overs live at the Wild Cabaret club in Glasgow where the big screens were up. When the news came through and it was all looking a bit bleak, we turned the volume down and I started talking over the top of people. The audience loved it and I realised this was something I could do really well.”

She then poked fun online at the likes of Theresa May, Ruth Davidson and Nicola Sturgeon, replacing their talk of policy and elections with chat about big Isa and her soup pots. A recent piece she did on Kim Kardashian (largely mocking her for walking backwards) also went down spectacularly well, while clips of supermodels, Pathé newsreels and Fanny Craddock (the original celebrity chef) are given the Godley treatment. “I started off doing it for me, really. I liked the fact that I could give those politicians a whole new background persona and the idea that they might have these ordinary conversations; I love the idea of that normalcy which cuts through all that bulls**t. The ones that are the hardest to do are of Katie Hopkins, because the audience just boo like they’re at a pantomime.”

Since the voice-overs took off, an unusual trend started which reminded Janey of the halcyon days of Spitting Image when politicians would tune in avidly on a Sunday night, desperate to see if they had been captured in wax and caricatured in song. “MPs will say, ‘Are you going to do me?’ I’d like to do some international ones; I do Trump but I want to do Australian and Canadian politicians. There’s a lot of fodder to go on.”

When she started performing comedy in the mid-90s, there were very few female acts kicking about, but Janey Godley has now become a standard bearer in Scotland for young women who might fancy a career in stand-up. “I did Have I Got News For You and I was the first working-class Scottish female comic to do that: the first and last. There are girls from Glasgow who saw comedy and it would be Kevin Bridges and Frankie Boyle, so they all thought – that’s not our job, that’s for Scottish men. But when they see me and they see someone like Fern Brady, they think – yeah, that’s also a woman’s job.”

Recently, Janey has ramped up her acting CV, appearing in Wild Rose (staring Jessie Buckley, Julie Walters and Sophie Okonedo) about a young woman trying to make her way in the world of Country music, and has written and directed a short film entitled The Last Mermaid. She’s also had a one-woman play run off-Broadway, and will be on TV screens soon playing the lawyer of Martin Compston’s character in Traces, a crime drama from an original idea by Val McDermid.

But for now, she’s enjoying making people laugh all over the country with both her no-holds barred stand-up and the unique nature of these new voice-overs. “The most important thing is that this has never been done before, no other comic in the world is doing this. I’ve been doing stand-up for over 20 years but it took a Tory called Theresa to make me famous.” Mrs May might now be virtually out of the public eye, but the moment has surely arrived for Janey Godley to take centre stage.

Janey Godley brings her Soup Pot Tour to Manchester Comedy Store on 26 February 2020. See website for full details.

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How has life been since the final of Britain’s Got Talent back in June?

Kojo: “Life is great – it’s all kicking off since the show, I mean… I’m going on a UK tour! I went up to the last week of the Edinburgh Festival, to do some shows, spread the word and mingle, which was brilliant, and I’ve had a sold-out try-out show in London too. So it’s all coming together ready for the tour.”

You grew up in foster care – how was that?
Kojo: “I was raised in Hackney, East London. My parents are from Ghana, and they got into a bit of trouble, so, from the age of five I was in foster care until about 16.
“I had an amazing experience of foster care. My foster family were from Guyana and Grenada, and I was with them the whole time. I was never moved around, which is brilliant, and a big part of what I want to share about having been a foster child – it’s important for both foster carers and the children to hear that message; foster care is not always a temporary thing.
“Some children don’t need to be in care forever, some do need long term. But consistency is what’s important, if that’s possible. And if they can get an injection of their culture, then it’s also OK for them to be with foster parents of another race, if they’re getting that background and input too. It helps ground you.”

It’s great to hear a positive experience of foster care. Are you still close to your foster family?

Kojo: “My foster mother, Aunty Sandra, she’s the main person in my life that I had a strong relationship with, and I still see her regularly now. She’s the first person I tell anything. My parents are in and out; we have good times and bad, but that’s all in a good place at the moment too. We’re all happy.
“With being a dad now, it’s important for me that those things are ironed out, for Roman’s sake. I’m big on energy, and I don’t want negative energy in his life. He is my priority, for him to be a happy boy – and he is.”

When did you realise you were funny?
Kojo: “I’d always been entertaining my family and friends. I was witty and quick with a response; in school, if I got in trouble, it was what I said not what I had done. I had an answer for everything.
“Comedy happened almost by accident. My first love was always football, but I had terrible discipline as a footballer. I was selected for a school of excellence with some of the best young players in England, on a course to study and play football. I was selected, but I had a terrible attitude about being on time, etc., and relied on being very talented. But it didn’t work out.
“I learned a big lesson in hindsight, and it turned out to be a blessing. Missing that opportunity to change my life, the pain I felt when it ended, that kept me disciplined when I found comedy. I would never let an opportunity ever slip through my hands again. I have so much respect for every opportunity that comes my way now.
“I realised I was a natural with comedy, but that I was going to work hard, find solutions and make no excuses.”

You were ‘discovered’ on BGT but you’d already been working on the comedy circuit for 20 years. How did you turn that natural ability into a career?
Kojo: “So, yes, I’ve been doing comedy 20 years, and now I’m the newcomer – thanks to BGT. 20 years in a nutshell…
“I was doing talent shows at university, and had the chance to go to comedy school, so borrowed £150 from my Aunty Sandra – I’ve more than paid her back now. After that I did a lot of university comedy gigs and built up a fan base.
“From that, I was able to set up Kojo’s Comedy Fun House, which ran every Sunday for eight years, with 300 people queuing up outside each week, packing it to the rafters and coming along week after week. I came from a partying background, so would invite celebrities to the comedy shows, as well as hosting exciting new comedians and DJs, so it became somewhere people wanted to be.
“What really made it big though was when David Chapelle was in town and heard about the club. I called someone who had seen him and got them to put him on the phone. He just came down and performed. ‘Going viral’ wasn’t even a thing at the time, but that’s kind of what happened. It was the first show he’d done after going away following his big success so everyone was talking about it, it was huge on YouTube and was a real international moment to see him back on stage.
“People started talking about the Fun House and I was hearing from American comedians over in the UK who wanted to come down. I was just a young comedian wanting to express myself there, and all this came from that small place.”

Alongside stand-up you’ve worked in TV, made a film and done radio. Tell us about that…
Kojo: “On the back of the Fun House, MTV Base got in touch, wanting to film the Fresh Prince Of Hackney, a take on the Will Smith show – when he was kind of fostered by his relatives in the Fresh Prince Of Bel Air. That was my first national exposure, and led to radio bookings – I did the Choice FM Breakfast Show, which is now Capital Xtra.
“I started writing too, I just didn’t know which was comedy was going to take me, so wanted to cover all the bases.
“I made a film called The Weekend on an absolute shoe-string budget and with a lot of new talents involved. And it got picked up by Netflix.”

And before BGT you were almost better known in America than here in the UK. How was that?
Kojo: “I’d met Nick Cannon through friends, who at the time was still married to Mariah Carey – how crazy is that?, and he was bringing a big improv[isation] show Wild N Out back to American TV and wanted to include some UK talent. I leapt at the chance; I’d watched the show as a kid, and it was a ridiculous opportunity to go and work with all these famous and amazingly funny people in America. Everyone I grew up with used to watch it, and there I was being invited to be the first British comedian on it.”

So, what made you audition for BGT?
Kojo: “I had been going through a bad period financially and in opportunities. I’d had my son, and that made it so much more pressurised to decide what I was going to do with the rest of my life… I was feeling like I’d been placed in the ‘has-been’ box so far as a comedy career was concerned.
“I was approached by BGT, they’d seen some videos online – although I didn’t actually know it was BGT at the time. I was told the producers had loved the videos and they were dying to get me on the show, so I decided ‘Why not?’
“I’d always said it wasn’t for me, I didn’t think it was credible. But, when I discussed it with my fiancée, she said the fact they’d had to find me as an ‘unknown’ meant they didn’t know me – so I had nothing to lose.”

What was it like, preparing for that first audition?

Kojo: “I didn’t just plan for the first audition, I planned my acts for every round from the first audition to the final. I had 20 years of material, so why not? I just had to decide which way round to use it, and to get my head straight about what was to come.
“As I gradually went through each phase, I realised what the opportunity was actually going to mean to me. OK, it’s ‘Britain’s’ Got Talent – but I didn’t realise the world would be watching online, ‘Got Talent’ is a global thing. “I know people in the comedy industry were saying ‘Why is he doing it?’, but people across the country didn’t know me. I had to be able to look at my son and know I had taken the chance, taken that massive leap of faith.”

Simon Cowell famously hates comedians on BGT, but he gave you his golden buzzer. How did that feel?

Kojo: “I was so nervous. The judges genuinely do not know what’s coming next as you walk out; it’s a conveyor belt of talent.
“Simon had given two comedians on before me absolute hell that day. My plan was that I wanted Amanda Holden and David Walliams’ approval. Alesha Dixon had seen me at gigs, so I hoped she’d be on side. I’d actually written Simon Cowell off, as I knew I only needed three of them to back me.
“It was the very first day of filming, and – to add to the madness – Simon had never pressed his golden buzzer on day one. So when it happened, everyone was so shocked; day one and a comedian! “The reaction was so gratifying. It told me ‘I can do this’. I had proven myself and removed the doubt about myself. After that, I knew I was good enough.”

How has it been since the show?
Kojo: “Absolutely life-changing. My dad was in Ghana and it came up on the news. I didn’t leave the house for four days after the golden buzzer audition was on TV; I had so many messages on my phone and everywhere I went, people we giving me their love and support. All the work during those 20 years had been gearing up to it, and that’s made it all a bit easier to cope with.
“It’s crazy, and has all been at the same time as adjusting to life as a first time dad. Roman’s oblivious to it, but we’re capturing it all on our phones and it’s amazing that he’s been on the journey with us.
“Roman’s also been life changing. He’s allowed me to be selfish, and people told me how much harder I’d want to work after becoming a parent… You’re making decisions for your child and not just for you.”

What was your aim with BGT and how do you feel ahead of the tour?
Kojo: “It wasn’t ever to win, it was to be in a better position – to hopefully get a call, to get management and to progress. I had opened for Kevin Hart and Chris Rock, I knew what you need to have around you with a good team. The older you get with comedy, the more experience you have to draw on.
“Touring nationally is a dream come true and the hard work is happening. We are working on the material, there’s definitely going to be a look at fatherhood – looking at what goes through a man’s mind as a new dad, as well as asking some kind of serious questions, like ‘Will I end up looking like my parents, will my child end up in the same situation as me?’
“I’m looking forward to touring, going to places I’ve never been to – like Swindon, Malvern, New Brighton, places in Wales I can’t even spell…
“In January, I was 40. I told my fiancée Tiff, I believe the best years of my life will be my 40s – and it’s definitely looking that way. Let’s have it!”

Kojo Anim Presents The Taxi Tour will take in 26 towns and cities across the country stopping at The Lowry, Salford Quays on 20 February 2020. Visit website for full tour details.

The post Kojo Anim: ‘I’ve been doing comedy 20 years, and now I’m the newcomer – thanks to BGT’ appeared first on Quays Life.

“As a word, ‘wallop’ just isn’t used enough but I use it quite a lot. I think it sums up me and my show. ‘Here it is, have a bit of that’, we’ll enjoy ourselves and then go home. I’m very much in it for the audience and to do whatever it takes to be as funny as possible for an hour and a half as opposed to delivering a message or narrative or life-changing view of the world. My show isn’t going to sort out Brexit, but it will take your mind off it for an hour and a half. Essentially, the show is all about the funniest things that have happened to me or I’ve thought of since the last tour.”

As a father now of two toddlers, the temptation for Beckett might have been to make Wallop! his ‘new-dad’ show. He’s more or less resisted that. “Though I have kids, it’s not my ‘I’m gonna talk about my kids for 90mins tour’. I love the kids and that’s going to be the hardest thing about going on tour. It’s not really about the things my kids have said, it’s more about my new relationship with my in-laws and my own parents. The show is about family. I’ve always wanted a whole family to sit down and laugh at my stuff; before it was more of a happy accident because my comedy is quite accessible, but now, all ages can get a lot from it.”

Coming from a very large family (“everyone’s my cousin in south-east London”), where Rob is the second youngest of five brothers, he’s noticed an over-compensating tendency for those siblings to stop him from getting ideas way above his station. “The level they go to in order to keep my feet on the ground is actually quite rude. It’s really odd how much they don’t talk about my job. If I worked at Sainsbury’s they’d ask me more about my work. They almost go out of their way to not turn me into some sort of showbusiness dick, and it’s not spoken about. They’re all proud, though, don’t get me wrong.”

His mum is also no doubt very proud of her lad’s achievements, but in Rob’s eyes has a funny way of showing it: “My mum always likes to have a go: ‘if you could get a degree in annoying . . . you’d have a degree in annoying.’ Thanks mum. If she could get a degree in analogies . . . I don’t think she’d get one.”

While his feet might be planted solidly on terra firma, that doesn’t mean that Rob Beckett won’t have ideas and nurture dreams about where his career might be headed in the future. “I want to do stand-up forever; I’d love to fill my local, the O2. It would be a dream of mine to have that many people in one place coming to see me. That would be amazing.”

His natural flair for shooting the breeze with anyone who comes into his orbit means that one day he can see himself fronting his own talk show. “I love hosting and presenting TV, and I’d really love to have a chat show later on in my career when I’ve calmed down a bit. I don’t think I’d get that much out of the guests at this point, but later on when I’m a bit more tired, I think I’d be a good chat-show host.”

In terms of the ideal TV show he’d loved to have appeared on, Rob mentions Game Of Thrones (“I saw Ed Sheeran and I think I would have ruined it as well”), and namechecks Match Of The Day (“to get on that, I would suddenly have to have a full career as a footballer”). While a big fan of football, he has recently got heavily into boxing. “It’s the comedy equivalent of sport, though obviously boxing is way harder. In performance terms, a singer has a band and an actor has a crew, but in stand-up comedy and boxing you’re out there on your own. To do all that and then get punched in the face? I’m in awe of them.”

It’s been 10 years since Rob Beckett first launched his career in the stand-up game, and 9 years since he took third spot (“I prefer to call it runner-up!”) in the prestigious So You Think You’re Funny competition which culminates each year at the Edinburgh Fringe. So, what would he say to his younger self, a decade on, now that he has a wealth of experience in stand-up comedy and the wider entertainment world in general?

“There are loads of things I would have told him not to do, but he wouldn’t have listened. I was just enjoying it and ploughing on, and obviously you make mistakes. But through throwing yourself into stuff and making mistakes you learn invaluable lessons. I had come from a working-class background and had no idea about the industry and I didn’t even know the Edinburgh Fringe existed, so I went in not giving a shit. Both parents were so supportive and there was no pressure, but maybe if you had been to Oxbridge or Durham and your parents had funded your education, they’d be saying ‘why are you going to the Edinburgh Fringe? You should be off being a barrister!’ So there was no expectation on me . . . But mainly I’d say to him, ‘cut your hair because it’s an absolute disgrace!’”

Rob Beckett’s Wallop! tour comes to O2 Apollo, Manchester on 13 and 14 December 2019. See website for full tour details.

The post Rob Beckett – ‘I had come from a working-class background and didn’t even know the Edinburgh Fringe existed’ appeared first on Quays Life.

Your latest show is called: ‘After Me Comes the Flood (But in French) drip splosh splash drip BLUBBP BLUBBP BLUBBPBLUBBPBLUBBP!!’ How would you describe it?

John-Luke: “I’m debating whether to describe it as “An hilarious stupid romp through too many daft characters and far too many silly ideas performed by me in a pink suit” or “just terrific”. I guess I’ll go with just terrific because I don’t want to undersell myself”.

Why do your shows have such long titles?

John-Luke: “I find them funny. But it’s also quite a good way of getting the right people in to see it – if you don’t find an awkward and ridiculous long title funny, then this probably isn’t the show for you”.

You are just over a month into your tour, do you change the material much as you go along?

John-Luke: ” It changes every show a bit – the performance changes with the audiences reaction to different bits. And the material changes over the tour, but not in any planned way – it’s a mixture of improvised bits and sudden thoughts of “oh it would be funny if this character did this thing”. Over the course of several shows I’ll find some sketches or routines have changed significantly, but I didn’t really notice it while it was happening.

How did training at the school of master clown, Philippe Gaulier influence your comedy?

John Luke: “I learnt some every useful lessons and got thoroughly irritated at the same time. I mean, the basic teaching method is you perform in front of the class and an old man hits a drum when you’re boring and you have to leave. So, the main lesson is don’t let an audience get bored. Another lesson was think about what the audience see, not just what they’re hearing. Why not have a costume that’s fun to look at? Why not use your body to make jokes land better? Another lesson (let’s call it lesson 3) was you don’t entirely get to choose the type of comedy you do – you need to listen to an audience and let them tell you the ways in which you’re funny. And lesson four, if everyone (you and the audience) are having fun, then that’s enough”.

Which clowns have inspired your comedy and how?

John-Luke: “It was a workshop with Doctor Brown that let me know I was missing something. He said something about how if you spend the first 15 minutes listening to the audience and giving them what they want, then they’ll go with you anywhere you want to take them. And watching Carlo Jacucci’s caterpillar routine was a thing of wonder. Oh and Spymonkey – they do the funniest naked scene I’ve ever watched. Although I’m keeping my clothes on in this show”.

Why did you choose stand-up comedy over circus clowning?

John-Luke: “I studied clowning quite far into my comedy writing and performing career, so I was already used to stand-up spaces. I wouldn’t know how to pursue circus clowning properly, and I guess there’s an anonymity to being a circus clown that doesn’t really suit my ego. To some extent, all these different art forms are the same thing anyway. It’s just a label to let the audience expect ‘something’.”

In this show you give away a lot of the punchlines before the joke. Where did that idea come from and how does it work for the audience?

John-Luke: “I was thinking about how I find surprises hard to deal with – I like it when everything goes to plan. That made me think about how a joke is a sentence with a surprise at the end: I thought “can you give away the punching and still have the joke work?” I’ve found when I tell the audience a punchline, then when it pops up in context, they sort of laugh harder to reward themselves for having remembered. And it’s fun to give the audience all the pieces, and still surprise them with how they come together”.

What is your favourite prop in the show and why?

John-Luke: “My ingenuity, because it makes me feel clever”.

Your last tour, ‘All I Wanna Do Is [FX: GUNSHOTS] With a [FX: GUN RELOADING] and a [FX: CASH REGISTER] and Perform Some Comedy!’ included 53 props. How many have you got this time?

John-Luke: “None! I’ve streamlined! Partly because I love having an audience imagine all the scenes and characters and the things they’re playing with, and partly because touring with a lot of props is tiresome”.

What is your favourite gag or sketch of all time?

John-Luke: “What’s ET short for? Because he’s got little legs”.

Is there anything else you’d like to say about the show?

John-Luke: “If you bring your friends, ask them if they like the title first”.

John-Luke Roberts brings his show, ‘After Me Comes the Flood (But in French) drip splosh splash drip BLUBBP BLUBBP BLUBBPBLUBBPBLUBBP!!’ to The Lowry, Salford Quays on 23 November 2019 and is touring the UK til March 2020. See website for full tour details.

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“You can take it in a variety of ways: is it every man for himself, as it appears to be around the world at the moment? Or is it that we should reconsider the fact that the whole of humanity will only survive and progress if every man pulls together? It really does depend on your point of view. I’m not a preachy sort of comic, I prefer to leave things up in the air and for the audience to make their own decisions.”

On an annual basis, Stephen takes a sparkling new show out to the nation, and each time fresh social and political challenges are there to be faced. This time around, Everyman may well be performed in a country which is now no longer part of the EU.

“What I’m trying to be more prepared for is how the audience will react because I did a show on the night of the Brexit vote, and that was the weirdest crowd I’d had for many years: there was a huge division in the room and people were in shock. The only other gig I could equate that to was one in East Anglia where there was a funny mood in the audience, and after about seven minutes I just said: ‘Hey guys, there’s about 800 of us in here: what’s happened?’ Someone shouted out, ‘They’ve closed the car park and we had to walk for 10 minutes!’ So they just sat there in a grumpy mood, and that was the exact same thing that happened on the night of Brexit.”

Stephen insists that he won’t cover Brexit if he finds he has nothing new to say about it, but he does have some broad areas he will definitely be confronting in Everyman. “I’m tackling things as simple as how we face our own mortality as we get older, and looking at things you can do to improve yourself when you’re trying to find answers to questions.”

This desire for answers has been partly sparked by a TV show he appeared on earlier in 2019. BBC’s Pilgrimage featured a number of celebrities (including Dana, Lesley Joseph and Les Dennis) who embarked on a journey (both physical and spiritual) to Rome. As an atheist and gay man, Stephen was initially taken aback when the group was offered a private audience with the Pope as part of their adventure.

“Never in my wildest dreams, at the dizziest heights of stand-up comedy when you’re meeting very famous people and on bills with Rihanna or Madonna, never did I think I’d be sitting down for a half-hour private audience with the Pope. Particularly for a man with no religious leanings; it was so surreal. I was very apprehensive because I said I would only be part of it if I could ask some questions; I didn’t want to be sitting there being talked at and not have the opportunity to address issues. I had a weight on my shoulders that if I didn’t do this, that I would be doing a disservice to a whole community of people. They did say it might spark an international incident depending on the question, but I said bring it on.”

The Pontiff’s response to Stephen’s question about not feeling accepted as a gay man by religion and religious groups surprised him by being so open and generous. “I said to a friend there beforehand that I was 100% prepared to walk out, not flounce which may have been great for TV, but just get up and leave if he had given me a stock response. But I was blindsided by how candid he was. He wasn’t that explicit in what he said but it was enough to make me realise that, you know what, you’re one of the good ‘uns.”

His experience during Pilgrimage left him altered and has bolstered one of the long-standing ideas he’s had for his own comedy. “I’ve always wanted to have people in the audience who don’t share the same views as me whether politically, socio-economically, and racially, and to see if we can have a common ground for laughing together. I don’t want to be that kind of comic who gets a big round of applause and everyone goes ‘yeah, I agree!’. I want you to laugh and to be blindsided in the way that the Pope blindsided me. I want you to be surprised, not to feel like you’re at a rally with like-minded people.”

Stephen is happy to be back on the road and delighted with the show he has put together. “The structure is in place, and I’m very fond and pleased with it. I think there’s a maturity to the show; I’ve got peace with myself in terms of not having to show off. It’s a departure for me.” But one thing that won’t be different is Stephen K Amos’ ability to make audiences laugh, wherever they are around the country. Especially if the venue car park is fully operational.

Stephen K Amos brings his Everyman tour to The Lowry on 15 January 2019. See website for full tour details.

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In the last year alone, she’s worked her socks off with a whole heap of excellent new TV credits on her CV: she’s appeared in Comedians Giving Lectures on Dave and The Comedy Bus for Comedy Central, recorded episodes for Richard Osman’s House Of Games, and made her mark on Live At The Apollo, while her own Live From The BBC stand-up special is back on the iPlayer. As if this wasn’t enough, Suzi was recently named as the Chortle Best Club Act, recorded a special for Radio 4 entitled Suzi Ruffell’s Postcards To Portsmouth and is co-writing a sitcom entitled Hatch about a non-nuclear family. Now she is all set to launch herself onto a second solo national tour.

“I’m now definitely happier than I have been for a long time. I’ve met someone, and that’s all very exciting, but I can’t stop being who I am. So my worries now might be about starting a family and what that will mean and what that child’s life might be like in this world . . . I don’t stop being me, so for the kind of comic I am that does confessional stuff and talks on stage about her overactive brain, I’m still a worrier..”

The last year has been especially busy and successful for Suzi, with her having completed a first UK tour, Nocturnal, and taken her act to Australia. But now she’s back, hitting British stages again with the intriguingly titled Dance Like Everyone’s Watching.

“My mum has a sign in our house that says ‘dance like no one’s watching’: the rest of my family are the least likely people to dance while nobody’s watching. We are a family of show-offs, so we dance like everyone’s watching. Everyone does show off a little bit. People who are super-smart show off by being able to do a crossword really quickly. We all do it in our own way.”

When she was growing up, the entertainer/show-off gene rather than the academic one seemed to be dominant in Suzi. She happily admits this herself, and it seemed to be recognised within the Ruffell family. “I’m not super academic. I remember talking to my mum about me going to university and she said ‘your brother’s the clever one; you can tap dance’. And that’s been the mantra of my life. When you’re a kid, it’s rubbish doing stuff that you’re not very good at, and maths and English were really hard for me at school. But when I was able to go to an am-dram society and put old-lady make-up on and walk with a stick and pretend to be someone‘s granny, I had the time of my life.”

And now British audiences are about to have a great time as Suzi brings them her new show. “Part of it is about the expectations of what you want and what you get. There are bits about the idea of the perfect relationship and what I thought having a career like this would be like. I romanticise being recognised by people for my stand-up and it happened a little while ago while I was in an Uber pool crying. I had hurt my back and had to get to an osteopath and so called a cab where people share. I just burst into tears and the other person said ‘were you on Mock the Week?’ I am very lucky doing the job I do but you have those ideas of what something is going to look like against the reality of what it is like.”

The reality now is that Suzi Ruffell is having a lot of fun finding her audience (those who haven’t got on board yet are in for a treat), and is happier with herself and her life. That all adds up to an exciting period ahead as she takes Dance Like Everyone’s Watching on the road. “I had a tour last year which completely sold out and we had to add extra dates. For me, that’s what it’s all about it. In the last six months I’ve really found my audience which has been the best; I absolutely love that.”

Suzi Ruffell brings her show Dance Like Everyone’s Watching to The Lowry on 28 November 2019. See website for full tour details.

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The relatively intimate space compared with the other two theatre spaces of the Lowry, allows for some audience interaction. Abigoliah approaches this banter like a lively friend who is genuinely interested to hear from the crowd. Her intention is not to rip people apart but to give Brits a little injection of American confidence with laughter along the way. This leads to some hilarious observational sketches and physical comedy mimicking us oh so apologetic Brits.

Abigoliah advocates a more upfront and accepting self-love approach – getting the audience to say out loud her confidence catch-phrase: ‘Look and this face, look at this face – flawless.’ At the same time she is quick to laugh at herself as she paints us all kinds of compromising pictures, such as riding a bike through Sydney wearing a tiny bikini like a political statement, and meeting her boyfriend through a fetish site then having to share all their early texts with the Home Office in a bid to gain a partnership visa. So far, she reveals, the embarrassment has been in vain, but we hope for the comedy circuits’ sake, if nothing else, this Ohio girl gets to stay.

Like all good comic storytellers, Abigoliah weaves and interweaves her stories until punchlines pile upon punchlines. These include well-crafted routines ranging from a too much information account of butt waxing to a thought-provoking and at the same time hilarious insight into America’s gun laws.

It is not a heavily political show, but Abiogoliah winds us in slowly and then hits us with something where we can feel unclear how to react. Did she just mention Josef Mengele? Yes, she did. But the link is absurd rather than offensive. Still, it injects a sharp, shock value that jolts the audience out of their comfort zone. Later she suggests we could reclaim words like ‘faggot’ and ‘jipped’ by changing their meaning to something else – because they sound good. It’s a suggestion not a rant, but it feels like she is pushing to see how far she can keep us – doing that American thing she talked of earlier – through persistence forcing us into submission because we Brits can’t say no.

On the whole though, we don’t feel beaten by her in these routines, just a bit thrown off course. As a comedian she is likeable, clever and very funny. By the end, do we know who she thinks she is? Well – she thinks she’s pretty much flawless – and she’ll even sell you a mirror after the show so you can be too. Who do we think she is? She’s a comedian ready to take her comedy to the next level. Go see her and bask in her confidence.

Abigoliah Schamaun’s Do You Know Who I Think I Am?! was at The Lowry on 27 October 2019. She is at The Comedy Store Manchester on 16 November and 19-21 December 2019. Visit www.abigoliah.com for details.

Read our interview with Abigoliah Schamaun.

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Always a man who likes an incendiary show title, Phoenix From The Flames represents Nick Helm’s return to something like his old self. The man who starred in BBC Three’s wonderfully charming Uncle, fronted a food programme for Dave entitled Eat Your Heart Out, and will soon appear in series two of Romesh Ranganathan’s Sky sitcom The Reluctant Landlord, has always given off the vibe that just about anything could happen during one of his live extravaganzas.

You don’t go along to a show with titles such as One-Man Mega Myth or This Means War! and expect to see a shy, retiring wallflower. Yet, for his 2017 touring show, There Is Nothing You Can Do To Me That I Haven’t Already Done To Myself, Nick delivered a set that was much more stripped back and intimate, with a few songs breaking up what was effectively a storytelling affair.

He insists that after his break from live comedy, he is now ready to get back to his roots. “I’m known for doing shows with production numbers and costume changes and props and a set. After the tour, which I really enjoyed, I did miss doing a proper old-school show, so this is me going back to what I started doing.”

The onstage Nick Helm is a very different animal from the polite and quietly spoken offstage man. A bombastic and in-your-face performer, there are few holds being barred when he lunges into full flow. There is a very good reason for him becoming such an unstoppable force of nature once the curtain goes up. “I do get very nervous and stressed before a show, and the day of a gig can be a complete write-off. That is why my act is the way it is. I get nervous all day and bottle all this tension and then I go on stage and let it all out. I’m very loud.”

As far away from the definition of a one-trick pony as it’s possible to get, Nick Helm is equally at home writing music, making short films, penning poetry and doing a bit of acting, as he is on stage working his stand-up magic. “When you need a break in one area, you just go and do something else. I have lots of different creative outlets. And that’s really what Phoenix From The Flames is all about: it’s about rising back from the year I’ve had. I had an up and down year personally; I suffered from mental-health issues and depression, but I’m now coming back to being my best self and bouncing back in an Alan Partridge-esque way. It’s really a tongue in cheek look at my life.”

With more people in the public eye willing to talk about the mental health issues which affect themselves or those closest to them, there’s certainly no reason why comedians shouldn’t be tackling these issues head on as well. “The last show was very personal and I’ve always dealt with depression in my comedy,” says Nick. “Before, I’d maybe have a one-liner about depression but as I’ve improved as a stand-up I can get up on stage and talk about my experiences and make that funny rather than just having some jokes that I’d try to get into my set.”

For Nick, this feels like a more honest approach to both the subject and to his craft as a stand-up comic. “I have a lot of friends who suffer from mental health issues. I think it’s possible to talk about these issues without it being morbid. So, this will be another personal show. But it’s OK, it’s still going to be a good night out!”

Treating audiences to many a good night out has led Nick Helm to creating a live comedy career that has pleased critics and award judges as well as the public at large. Among the accolades he has received for his live shows are Best Breakthrough Artist at The British Comedy Awards, Best Music And Variety Artist from Chortle, and Best Newcomer from the Loaded LAFTAs, while he also scooped the Dave Joke Of The Fringe Award in Edinburgh in 2011 for a gag (which he actually attributed to his dad) about Snow White and her Seven Dwarves (look it up, it’s a clever one).

But Nick Helm is never likely to rest on any such laurels. A consummate professional and hard worker who always strives to get better as a comedian, he is a close reader of his own product. “The percentage of actual stand-up has crept up a bit over the years. For Phoenix From The Flames, I have to work out how many songs I want in and how many poems I want in, and how much stand-up I want to do. You’ve got a pile of songs and poems over here, a pile of jokes and stories over here, and a pile of props over there. The process of working it all through is like having a bucket of Lego and throwing it all over the floor: you can do whatever you want with all those pieces.” And as he will no doubt prove once again, with Phoenix From The Flames, Nick Helm just can’t stop giving audiences exactly what they want.

Nick Helm is at The Dancehouse, Manchester on 8 November 2019. See nick-helm.co.uk for full tour details.

Stewart Francis goes into the punset.

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