Kitson's Email #16

Must I Paint You a Picture?, recommendations for other shows and an eminently skippable arguably pretentious essay about why I don't do "online content"

Introductory statement of intent from Kitson HQ

Hope you’re all well and enjoying your lives. This isn’t a standard edition of the newsletter! As I said in the last one of these I sent in April, series 3 of the short stories is pencilled in for the autumn (when, all being well, there will be news about my book too) because my main focus at the moment is my stand-up show ‘Must I Paint You a Picture?’ which will be at the Edinburgh Fringe for the whole of August. I’m doing it without an agent/production team etc. so as well as trying to learn/perfect the show, I’m busy trying to grapple with all the kind of logistical and promotional tasks that are famously¹ not my forte. As such this email is mostly an extension of that, BUT with some extra bits I think are interesting below, that get juicier as you go.

Having said that though, those extra bits are also about the Fringe/UK comedy in 2024.² So fair warning if that isn’t your cup of tea³ , I thank you for your continued subscription and normal service will be resumed in the next newsletter in the autumn. I promise!

‘Must I Paint You a Picture?’

My show is called ‘Must I Paint You a Picture’ and is my ‘debut hour’ of standup. I’ve been working on a version of the show for a long time, arguably as long as I’ve been doing comedy⁴ . I’ve done a lot of work-in-progress shows and in the last couple of months, it finally became something, dare I say, I think is actually going to be quite good. My only expectation of what will happen in Edinburgh is that I’m doing the show 25 nights in a row - so it’s a massive relief to say I like it. Now, I just need to learn it and for people to turn up.

While procrastinating the former and engaging in vague hopes of the latter. I have made a (borderline insane) poster and a ‘trailer’ I have included below if you haven’t already seen them.

Trailer

I’ve been very flattered by the response from people who have already seen it, particularly recently. It’s been named one of Edinburgh Evening News’ Top Shows to see and also been featured in the Metro, Chortle, The Wee Review and the List. So hopefully I’m not talking totally out my arse. Plus you’re subscribed to my newsletter - so hopefully anyone reading this will like it. It is literally me talking for an hour. Like this - but live!⁵

It’s in the Wee Yurt at Hoots @ Potterrow (next to the underpass where the BlundaGardens/Bus were in previous years) from the 2nd-25th at 22.55. You can buy tickets here and I would encourage you to do so to alleviate my stress levels and also really help me out in terms of ‘Kitson’s having a good one’ vibes.

Even if you’re not going to Edinburgh - any shares of the trailer/poster online or telling mates/family/colleagues who are going would be amazing. It’s free to do, and you never know who might be interested. If you would like to see it for yourself though, my remaining warm-up shows are here:

Bristol - Smoke and Mirrors - 21st July (with Burt Williamson) - TONIGHT!

Exeter - Little Drop of Poison - 23rd July

Oxford - The Old Library Bar - 24th July (with Burt Williamson)

Isle of Wight (Ventnor Fringe) - Ingram’s Yard - 27th and 28th July

Tickets to all of them are here. Have stuck the show blurb below, with further (aforementioned) ‘interesting bits’ below it.

Show Blurb

Alex Kitson is an award-winning comedian with a secret. One he's fed up of keeping. Come find out what made this 'incredible... so clever' (BBC Radio) 'master of his craft' (Capers Comedy) perform the show he never thought he'd do. A debut hour about hope, escaping the woods and jokes. Lots and lots of jokes. Tour Support for Fin Taylor, Tom Ward and Vittorio Angelone. 'A knack for making you burst into laughter...[a] comedic sensation' (Big Belly Comedy Club). Best of Brighton Fringe Comedy Award 2023 (Nominated). Best Joke Winner (Bath Festival).

Recommendations for other shows

The Edinburgh Fringe is incredible and I am pumped about going. Not just to do my own thing, but because I’ll get to watch loads of other incredible stuff. The only problem, as always, ‘is what shall I go and see’.

I am planning to give anyone who comes to see my show a little guide to help guide their decision making. It’s something audience members enjoy so this year I thought I’d just list a few people who I think are going to have a particularly good year and wanted to bring attention to. Instead, that idea sprawled into a spreadsheet containing multiple categories with hundreds of shows name-checked that is obviously far from exhaustive, definitive or objective. The link to see said spreadsheet is HERE and here is the explanation I have written at the top of it.

Hi everyone, here is a list of the shows I would highly recommend in Edinburgh. Disclaimer, in compiling this I have still definitely forgotten lots of people and my knowledge/opinions are, annoyingly, far from exhaustive/definitive. I can only go off what I know and who I've seen/what I've heard! I'm writing this in June so will try and update when I'm there (no promises on this) Hopefully the categories make it clear... But as far as possible I tried to list acts people might not know over massive names because I don't think there's much point in me recommending, say, Adam Hills and Dara O'Briain. Go watch someone you don't know - that's why you're here! The full list of what I'm personally planning to see is below if you scroll down!

Having said that though, I would like to shout out ten shows/acts in particular in this email. Not to take away from those not specifically listed here at all, but the Edinburgh Fringe is incredibly competitive, and there are some things that help people stand out from the fray some enjoy that others don’t. Again, no beef with those who have those advantages (signed to a big agent, TV appearances, social media following etc. etc.) most⁶ of have them because of a combination of exceptional talent and hard work. But at the Fringe, I think people should seek out (and promote) the brilliant acts out there without them too. So I’d especially like to recommend the following who fit this criteria:

Ten very funny people I would HEARTILY recommend - with less than 10k Instagram followers, who have never done TV, who⁷ are either unsigned or not with one of the ‘big’ comedy agents

Alfie Packham

Andrew White

Burt Williamson

David Eagle

Josephine Lacey

Nina Gilligan

Peter Jones

Rich Spalding

Rosalie Minnett

Sarah Roberts

Individually they are all excellent. Most I have already seen and loved their shows in preview/or gigged with them loads over the years. Others I don’t know personally, but have admired for a long time from afar and, on TOP of their already superb reputations, have heard whispers about their shows this year being unbelievably good. So check out my spreadsheet - but I have highlighted these guys in bold check them out!⁸

A brief introduction to the below

I suspect it isn’t the case for all reading this, but for me the elephant in the room writing this email and being a comedian in 2024 is that selling tickets is becoming increasingly tricky without a significant online following. Which I, eeer, don’t have for various reasons. I wrote a version of the below a few months ago about this, then ummed and ahhed about whether to publish it for months. It’s far too long, to the extent if you’re reading this newsletter in your inbox it might not show the whole thing. I’m very worried about looking like a bellend. Plus, since then, several other articles have actually covered a lot of the same ground. But on releasing the trailer, which is the only footage of me now online I decided, in the end, if I can’t publish it here where can I? So here it is: ‘an eminently skippable, overly long, arguably pretentious essay about why I don't do “online content”.’

Why I’m the Biggest Idiot in the World

(a comedian who doesn’t do online content)

There are certain conversations that stick with you. These can be wonderful of course; declarations of love, wise life advice from a friend, times your worldview transformed for the better. Most of the conversations I remember vividly years later, though, are many times I was catastrophically, abysmally wrong about something. Learning about bitcoin in 2013; but thinking I wasn’t an idiot and keeping my babysitting earnings in my childhood piggy bank. Warning a mate that asking his soon-to-be-long-term-girlfriend out a second time was borderline harassment, buying six pairs of skinny jeans in 2017 because they would never go out of style and I would not change shape ever again.

In my life now as a stand-up comedian, I spend a lot of time spouting similar, albeit enjoyable, rubbish on or backstage. Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about a conversation I once had as a brand-new stand-up comic in the West Country. 

I was talking to other acts on the bill before a gig. In between other gossip lost to time, someone bought up a peer who that week, had created a Facebook fan page for themselves and invited us all to ‘like’ it. This had irked him because it was way too early to do that in his opinion. None of us had one yet. We weren’t professional, still doing ‘open spots’ (the gigs newer comics do to learn their trade) and that act should wait until they ‘needed’ one to start self-promoting. That was the way it worked. Promoting yourself this early was arrogant, he implied. Most in the room agreed and didn’t understand why a new comedian would do such a thing. In typical male stand-up comedian fashion, we all started shouting our opinions at each other. ‘Who is going to follow them?’, ‘What are they even going to post?’ ‘I get it if you’ve got big gigs to promote, but no one cares about what open mics you’re doing’. The gig’s yet-to-arrive headliner, who we all admired, didn’t have a fan page either, despite being a professional act. ‘Why does they think they needs one when he doesn’t?’ was the unanimous opinion on the matter.

I remember cowardly nodding along with the others, my modus operandi at the time as the youngest in most green rooms, but I suspected they were probably wrong.

I’m not an expert, but setting up social media is what you do immediately when launching any business or brand. By stepping on stage and seeking to do comedy as a profession we were, like it or not, starting a business of sorts (albeit a business where you get to shout about your genitals more than most). Being in denial about that was probably counterproductive however icky we felt about it. Still, the conversation moved on and most of us, including me, didn’t professionalise our social media long after that conversation. 

For me, I resisted the idea because comedians sticking their nose up at such social and economic wisdoms actually felt edgy and transgressive to me at the time - part of what had drawn me to stand-up in the first place. Being on the circuit felt like I had stowed away on a pirate ship, embarking on an adventure to one day be a passable imitation of the swashbuckling headliners I admired. It was a pirate’s life for me! Not playing by society’s ‘rules’ was the whole point of the irreverent crew I’d joined and loved. Obviously, the reality was far from this. Shirking my already negligible commitments to mumble puns nervously into the void hardly made me a renegade. Even so, trying to solicit followers, likes and shares on one of Zuckerberg’s websites still felt like the total antithesis of this new world. Also, I didn’t want to get called an arrogant wanker by some other loser in a car share.

That conversation took place in early 2019. Fast forward to now, what we were saying feels so ignorant and outdated it feels like recollecting rolling my eyes at a fellow caveman using fire to cook his mammoth, or pretentiously calling a flat round rock he’d carved ‘the wheel’. Inevitably, the person who quickly set up a fan page is now a professional comedian with a big agent - gigging at every major club in the country. The headliner who stoically didn’t have one has since embraced the new frontier and amassed hundreds of thousands of followers. Currently, he is selling out huge theatres and, overlooked by the industry before, is making his first TV appearances and has multiple scripts in development. Even more predictably, the act who was whining no longer does comedy. 

The conversation feels so archaic because, in the last few years, the comedy industry has been totally turned upside down by online content. Comedians discovering a vast audience through the internet is nothing new. To name a few, Dane Cook (MySpace). Rob Delaney (Twitter). Russell Peters, Bo Burnham, Paul Smith and Andrew Shulz (YouTube) all broke through on the internet before the pandemic catalysed the process. But it wasn’t the norm. The popularity of TikTok, Instagram Reels and their imitators, though, has made it so, and that has changed conversations and behaviour on and offstage significantly. 

The incentive is clear. Never has having a gargantuan, money spinning, theatre-and-stadium-filling-fanbase seemed so within reach to anyone with a smartphone. This sounds like hyperbole, a cliche from a previous era of the internet, but there are enough success stories in the last few years to prove it isn’t a fluke, it’s the future. The biggest comedy superstars of tomorrow aren’t on TV panel shows or even in movies. They’re on your phone doing crowd work, sketches in the park or filming a podcast. Even on a smaller scale on the UK circuit, your follower count has, in a short space of time, become a currency the industry trades in. It’s not rocket science. If people want to see you live, they will pay to do so and anyone with any business sense will be cognisant of that fact. If you’re an agent, booker or producer from any rung of the industry there’s little economic incentive to choose ‘amazing comedian A’ over ‘good but huge online comedian B.’ An army of fans who will follow someone loyally makes everyone’s job easier. More than ever, everyone knows the potential of being ‘good online’. 

So, at gigs up and down the country the attitude towards social media has become unrecognisable from that conversation a few years ago. Now, multiple tripods jostle for prime spots at the back of gigs. Backstage, acts talk about editing software, or which cameras are best while taping tiny microphones to their bodies for better, more professional sound in the edit suite. For newer acts, rumours and spurious gossip about which agencies only sign those with followings, or famous internet personalities can’t replicate their prowess online live get shared in hushed, jealous tones. Before and after their sets, acts post to further curate the brand, their newsfeed filled with sold-out tour update after sold-out tour update from comedians doing similar gigs as them the year before. You need to be on it. Another conversation plays in my mind now. A friend tellling me about TikTok in early 2020. We were both filming online sketches, and they had started doing theirs in portrait to target this new app, I continued filming in landscape to focus on growing my Twitter following. They now have well over a million followers across platforms, Twitter is now Elon Musk’s X and I’m writing a long, unpublishable essay I’m conflicted about even posting.

There’s wholesale change in the air and a myriad of reasons this is amazing and exciting. Comedy is more popular and accessible than ever, and it’s not a coincidence that it coincided with comedians being able to control their own output to the mass market for the first time. You can access your core demo with previously unparalleled efficiency. The old industry gatekeepers are increasingly irrelevant, the thinking goes, and no longer are certain acts having to dilute their unique voice and artistic expression for the typically white, male, middle-class, metropolitan elites. Good riddance. Online comedy, from the outside, is cartoonishly meritocratic. If people like you = numbers big. If they don’t, numbers = small.

It’s reassuring to note, too, that success online isn’t random. There’s an irrefutable positive correlation between comedians who are huge online and those who combine vast amounts of natural talent and superhuman work ethic. Obviously, there are also plenty of comedians fitting that description who don’t have followings bordering on the biblical, but the ones who do rarely get there by mistake. The ethos among comedians has done a total 180. Whatever you want out of comedy, ‘online’ is the answer to getting it. If you’re anyone with a semblance of ambition then, you’d be an idiot not to take part. 

But I don’t. 

I have no videos of my stand-up online anymore. A standup special I filmed is unavailable, I archived or unlisted sketches I filmed and released during the pandemic. In a shocking turn of events for a young white male comedian with lots of ill-informed and strongly held opinions, I don’t have a podcast either. This neo-Luddite attitude confuses others. I texted a friend of mine the other day to congratulate them on getting an agent. They thanked me, kindly asked me how my career was going then told me in extended detail how imperative it was that I should put out videos too. The advice was coming from a place of real generosity; I appreciated they cared and wanted the best for me but they seemed more vexed than I was. The subtext was clear, what am I doing?

So here we go. I know others share some of my reasons but I do not intend to go over pre-trodden ground and stress my reservations aren’t coming from a snobbish place. I admire those who do online content greatly. I think it’s a shame that those who have written about this culture shift in the past have often, deliberately or not, been quite snide and dismissive about the work of content creators. Being creative, at whatever level, is heroic and comedy is, famously (and annoyingly) subjective. So I’m not writing this out of a delusion that my work is better or a lack of video output serves some greater artistic mission. It’s not a mask for my ego either; believing that because I, Alex Kitson, am an unknown, the entire system must be flawed and we must somehow change it until I, Alex Kitson, am personally successful. ‘Any bellend complaining about how they should be further along in comedy should just shut the fuck up and write better fucking jokes,’ is a piece of advice I received and internalised years ago. Which for me is correct advice 99% of the time. I’ll (re)-start doing online content again at some point, because I am well aware it’s the path forward.

But I still have concerns I’d actually been hoping someone else would express. Because, as with most apparent utopias, the golden age of reels has some darker truths under the surface. The online content grind is not a happy one for many, especially for those doing it on their own or not established before the culture shift. There are precious few who enjoy the hours-long-or-longer process of filming and editing videos of themselves, putting them online and crossing their fingers that precious likes and shares flow forth. If you’re already established and can pay someone to clip up your TV appearances over the years and find your tour selling even quicker than normal, that’s fantastic. But watching my peers set up their cameras and microphones at all levels of comedy gigs is interesting because of their antipathy towards it. The attitude is at best one of reluctant obligation, a brutal initiation in order for your dreams to become a percentage point more realistic. Asking a comedian in the early stages of this process whether they are excited about making reels feels a bit like asking Sisyphus how healthy and fit he must feel climbing that mountain every day. 

There is seemingly no end to this grind either. Entertainment jobs merging under one umbrella: the content creator/influencer; is a worry for anyone with an eye on welfare for the individuals involved. Comedians are not renowned for mental stability in the first place, and professional content creator is a job with a brief history and an already undeniable long-term pattern of people not being able to do it for very long. Holding the internet’s attention long enough to monetise it, then maintaining it sustainably long-term is something few achieve. In the absence of the old (flawed) human gatekeepers, creators and artists’ aspirations are now subject to the whims of something potentially more insidious; the merciless nature of a relentless algorithm and faceless toxicity of the internet.

Numbers are limitless, you can always be bigger, more successful and be doing more to grow them. A demand on one’s psyche that is rarely positive. While there are so many amazingly creative, funny, beautiful things that go viral once, to make it a career you need to do it repeatedly. More predictable success is often found in content that attracts attention for a multitude of dispiriting reasons. Conflict, unoriginality, people’s appearance, or, most depressingly, online sexism, ableism, transphobia or racism. But either path you take, the incentive to produce as much content as possible and sacrifice your own mental health in order to do so exists. For most, it’s not the creative freedom they’d hoped for.  

Producing comedy for the internet then is, to put it mildly, draining and I worry about the consequence of it becoming part of climbing the ladder in real life. Stand-up at the entry level already has enough issues being accessible without adding on requiring a third profession, the content creator, on top of the load. It’s not hard to see how moving the goalposts and demanding new acts commit even more time and resources to comedy to not be dismissed as hobbyists will further reduce the live circuit’s diversity. Those with inconvenient day jobs, children and other caring responsibilities, disabilities, less disposable income or from geographically inconvenient places and minority backgrounds already start with a vast disadvantage. Demanding video content on top of this to progress further won’t help, especially, I should emphasise, for those who have the audacity to be doing stand-up on the internet who aren’t straight white men. The amount of hate female and trans acts get if they happen to be holding a microphone, is disproportionate and horrible to stumble across, let alone receive. The patriarchy is still at large and I think expecting underrepresented acts to be subjected to hate speech as an occupational hazard is a genuine diversity issue. Why should talented, charismatic people pursue stand-up comedy over online avenues where they can find their audience more efficiently there, where there are less bigoted, preconceived notions of who should be doing it? That should concern everyone.

Stand-up thrives and solidifies its status as an art form when it comes from a variety of voices who have mastered their craft in the live arena. Those likely to be time-poor at the start of their careers are the very people the circuit is already lacking because of this. It’s a sad irony that just as the TV gatekeepers began to prioritise such diversity and online comedians are accessing previously untapped audiences - we could end up handing the label of ‘exciting new live acts’ back to young, usually affluent, men in the big cities. 

Even as a member of the aforementioned category. I’ve got another, different reason I actually can’t do online content. My day job that pays the bills. I work in a school alongside comedy, a job I sought after being advised it was the perfect job to do alongside stand-up. I could leave mid afternoon to get to gigs and be free to go to the Fringe in August. Romesh Ranganathan, Greg Davies, James Acaster and Frankie Boyle, some of the UK’s biggest comedians of the last fifteen years, all worked in schools when they began their careers. I started after university in support staff roles, declining offers to be supported teacher training to focus on comedy. Since the pandemic and the rise of clips, the advice I received is no longer particularly good. After a brief period going full-time, moving to London meant returning to work in education last year. I’d tried to find another role, but a CV with little other than comedy gigs or working in schools meant time and money ran out. As a condition of my employment and understandably strict safeguarding rules at the school, I had to remove all the videos of me performing comedy on the internet. Down came my special, down came some fairly successful clips, down came the less-successful-but-took-a-lot-of-work pandemic sketches. One owner of footage of my eighth gig initially refused and delayed my employment by a fortnight before relenting. They said sensitive day jobs and trying to be a comedian were incompatible, and told me to I need to have a rethink. Although I think that is out of sync with the reality that most comedians can no longer rely on the live circuit as their sole source of income, they’re right. With progression as a comedian now, you need to have videos online.

With the phrase ‘just write some better fucking jokes’ rushing around my head I really want to be clear. I don’t want sympathy. Comedy is competitive, there are plenty of replacements and after all, no one is asking me to do any of this. I face no other barriers to the industry other than my ability. The solution to my ‘problem’ is clear: leave my current job or stop complaining. That’s a choice for me to make, it’s a privilege to even have control over such decisions. But I don’t think that it’s outrageous I’m frustrated that, with a show in Edinburgh to sell this summer. The ‘smart’ thing to do is quit my job so I can post TikToks that might not even work. 

I want to separate my career from my wider point though, as I fear that undermines the argument to anyone reading it who thinks I’m rubbish. I also concede that much of this is doomsaying. At the time of writing, it would be misleading to argue that big social numbers are now the sole decider for industry attention. Many of the traditional avenues for talent-spotting still exist, and agents still keep their eyes mostly on the live scene to fit into their rosters. Being undeniably funny onstage can obviously still get you most places. But I feel this is increasingly at risk as a lack of success online puts a ceiling on people’s careers, with consequences for the quality of live comedy long term. 

I think it’s already happening. I know comedians who are consciously travelling less and turning down gigs to spend free time after work making videos, as that’s a better use of their time. Meanwhile, some clubs in America (typically ahead of the curve stand-up wise) won’t book headliners below certain follower counts. “It’s great for clips,” one established act said truthfully when I asked why he started MCing years into his career. He’s right. The compere at a gig talks to the audience more and can harvest more clips to feed the algorithm without burning material, something even a circuit stalwart couldn’t disagree with. I’ve met newer acts who, shame-free, admit they have next to no material. Nor do they seek it, their acts are asking the audience embarrassing questions which, surprise surprise, are easy to turn into clips. A different comedian who started his career on TikTok, brand new to stand-up, was told to ‘learn crowd work’ by his agent because they know that’s where the views and money are. They’re all correct. 

The increased filming of gigs is a harmless symptom, but I believe the prioritisation of an audience elsewhere is less so. Stand-up is the most live of mediums - so acts not always fully playing to who or what is in front of them will inherently affect quality. I hope I’m wrong and it doesn’t, but as the money on the circuit falls and the alternative spirit of the Fringe prices itself further into irrelevance, the incentive for comedians to seek numbers above all else is inevitably heading in one direction. At one gig, there are fewer comedians and breaks programmed than before, but the night finishes later. The regular MC does clips, and their crowd work features between every act searching for a viral moment with little regard for the flow of the show. Previously renowned for an overly-friendly audience, the gig is significantly harder to play. Experienced acts know to go on first, because by the end the crowd is smaller, tired and tense as the host scours the room for more victims to lambast. This isn’t unique. Knowledge of ‘crowd work’ means people fear the front row more than ever. When I MC, I have to do so much more work to ease the anxiety of anyone I speak to that I’m not out to humiliate them. On the flip side, other pieces elsewhere have documented worsening behaviour among the audience who remain. In a profession where we’re supposed to be good at reading the room, I’m sensing an atmosphere that is souring.  

Again, I’m not blaming any individuals at all. It’s perfectly possible to get big online without automatically descending into hackery, blandness, edgelord-ism or any other way that doesn’t appeal to me personally. But it feels as though online’s impact on live comedy will be detrimental. 

All credit to the TikTok comedian I mentioned earlier, he’s talented and hard-working enough to be successful without the internet and when I met him he had an amazingly self-aware outlook about where he was at. At least I met him at a gig, I wouldn’t bet on most in his position to bother soon. There is already a comedian online who has been discovered to have faked his ‘clips’ at home, to huge success online. The increased visibility of stand-up, but dominated by comedians less skilful and/or selfless than past generations, might end a potential live comedy boom in the UK before it even gets going. 

The last thing I want to do by writing this, gently suggesting all that glitters in this gold-rush isn’t gold, is to cause division. Above all else, I’m a stand-up fan and I just hope by raising these issues, we might mitigate the negatives as we steam boldly forward. The positive benefits of online are obvious and my aim in writing this isn’t to dismiss them, wrinkle my nose at ambition and hope other pretentious wankers find comfort in their anxieties being expressed. Instead, I just hope our new technological tools can make stand up better, not worse. Working together for common interests will go a long way and for me starts by fighting the temptation to do nothing and myopically hoping I might be one of the lucky ones.

Because if we can embrace and harness the creativity and diversity of new voices, I think the new era actually has the potential to over deliver on its promise. To name a few things we can do together. Continuing to resist bigotry online and off and the exploitation of labour on the circuit when we see. By not putting online careers above the quality of the show we’re performing on. Start to apply the rigorous self-policing of unoriginality we’re used to live to online, we don’t just to preserve live comedy and the livelihoods of those who rely and thrive on it, but ensure the next generation of talent won’t just ignore it entirely. If bookers at every level don’t penalise those less ‘online’ unconsciously, or take the lazy option and book internet names for gigs beyond their ability but are easy to sell. With more good work out there being experienced, the better audiences will understand how, why and what makes up their ‘For You’ page. It’s more likely tastes will refine and quality will rise with it. Audiences’ understanding and appreciation of how amazing stand-up can, and should be, will only grow. I’d actually argue it already has. With that shift, the rest of the industry might be emboldened to support those they should have been more supportive of years ago. Fingers crossed new fans and their cash will follow, and hopefully all of us in comedy can truly begin a better era - and starve off our own irrelevance in the process.

I doubt many will make it this far or to be honest, if I’ll even release this. It’s far too long for starters. This, hilariously, was supposed to be 800 words. A piece to pitch to publications so I could plug my Edinburgh Fringe show and I have massively run the light, so to speak. If I overran by this much doing my show it would end at nearly half past five in the morning.

Frankly, this might be yet another example of me being incredibly wrong, incredibly loudly. I might well be too starry-eyed and optimistic, or indeed probably coming across like some relic of comedy past, already washed up and past it by my mid-20’s. Doomed to still be pathetically muttering about Ian Cognito, Daniel Kitson, ‘the craft’ or ‘writing better fucking jokes’ under my breath for the rest of my forever plateaued career. Backstage, multi-millionaire teenagers doing their first gig to warm-up for arena tours will look at me, concerned, until someone whispers in their ear with an explanation. ‘He thought he could make money from comedy with no followers’. ‘Ahhhh,’ they’ll say. Then they’ll look at me with pity like someone trying to unlock an e-scooter with a fax machine.

But I don’t mind that at the moment. I’m not quitting my job. I enjoy it and because of it, I’m enjoying comedy more than ever. I can’t get big online at the moment, so the weight I see so many others around me buckling under is off my shoulders. The ‘restriction’ has actually freed me. By forcing me to focus on what I actually got into stand-up for; the love and excitement of doing it and the challenge of being the best comedian I can be without being diverted by distractions, I am loving doing what I’m doing - it’s a healthier place to be. I feel a bit like a rock-less Sisyphus, now happily hiking every spare moment he has.

So that’s what I want to share with whoever is reading this, why I’m being on the surface of it such an idiot. Comedians’ despair with ‘online’ often isn’t because they aren’t successful. It’s because the way they spend their day isn’t what they signed up for. Editing clips, hunched over phones and laptops trying to appeal to the algorithm isn’t the freewheeling creative cut and thrust ‘job’ we all thought it would be. With all creativity, loving the work is the only truly sustainable path to doing it long term.

I am not saying any of this as advice to be rich and famous. It’s terrible advice for that. I’m suggesting quite the opposite. There are much easier ways to pursue fame and fortune. Not am I prescribing it as an attitude for all. But I think unhappy artists (of all kinds) would benefit from remembering to enjoy why they started, because within that lies the secret to a happy, productive, creative existence. 

Because at the end of the day success and money wasn’t the aim when I started stand-up. They were only ever going to be nice byproducts of what I actually wanted; being a pirate with a place on the ship. That’s the conclusion I’ve settled at. I don’t need to constantly chase the X that marks the spot. Being on board at all was the goal. As long as I avoid the rocks that scuttle so many, I’ll be out there for as long as I want. If at the moment that involves steering against the tide, slowing down and watching treasure-chasing speed boats and catamarans zip past me on their own adventures, I don’t mind. It doesn’t mean I don’t respect them or want to go where they’re heading. I do. But it’s not a race and there’s more for everyone beyond the horizon - you just have to stay afloat. At the moment I’m happy to glean my satisfaction by sitting in the crows nest and between glugs of grog and shanty singing, pausing to remember just how far this stowaway has come.

Yo! Ho! Ho! Full steam ahead! (Come to my Edinburgh Show). 

1. See ‘breakdown when I was a professional comedy promoter in the summer’ (2022), ‘academic chaos’ (2001-2019) and ‘every other aspect of my life’ (1997-present)

2. You know how you can buy orange juice with ‘extra juicy bits’, but those bits are actually just more orange? Therefore, very unlikely to appeal to anyone not sold on normal orange juice already? The extra bits of this are like that,

3. Or juice I suppose

4. Less arguably, since early 2023

5. Potentially including further overexplanations of the incredibly obvious

6. Discussion for another time

7. To my knowledge

8. Suddenly got worried people reading this might think I am under the illusion that my recommendation or opinion will be massively helpful or influential for these acts. I doubt it is. But hey, worth a go.