Gagging for a chat: Susan Calman, Scott Agnew, Daniel Sloss and Kevin Bridges

Published on Wednesday 4 March 2009 15:24

THE MAGNERS GLASGOW International Comedy Festival begins next week. Ahead of that, we invited four of Scotland's best emerging comics to The Stand to discuss their careers and professional likes and loathings.

Alongside compere and star of Channel 4's Blowout , Susan Calman, was reigning Scottish Comedian of the Year, Scott Agnew, Frankie Boyle's 18-year-old "apprentice" and erstwhile gag writer, Daniel Sloss, and unnaturally talented 22-year-old Kevin Bridges, a veteran of London's Comedy Store and major clubs around the UK. The

following has been severely edited for profanity and libel…

How does Glasgow rate alongside other comedy festivals?

KB: This is my fourth year and it's certainly been building since 2005.

SC: The Leicester Festival is good to be involved in but some big acts don't sell many tickets. Attendances here are better and you get loads of support from the organisers. I didn't do a show last year and I felt like I was missing out.

SA: It's just constant, three, four or five gigs a week for me, so a bit like Edinburgh. Except there's money to be made as well.

KB: You get used to the mad things, like gigging on the bus from Edinburgh. Or the comedy pub crawl, where the whole point is to win Magners' affection. It's full-on marketing, they really know how to push it.

SA: I did the bus two years ago. Eight o'clock in the morning, trains on strike, all these really pissed-off commuters trudging on and there's me going, "Hiya!"

KB: Raymond Mearns did the bus and there was a reviewer aboard on his way to work. He got ****ing crucified!

How does it compare to the Edinburgh Fringe?

SA: A standalone comedy festival really appeals to Glaswegians, rather than driving through for a bunch of Croatians juggling and fire-eating, especially as the transport infrastructure into Edinburgh is such a complete waste of time.

SC: But they've got the tram! For me, it's nice to do a gig in my home city and talk about it, because Scottish comics are so often criticised for being parochial when you perform elsewhere.

SA: As soon as any Scottish act opens their mouth at the Fringe and says anything even vaguely Scottish, you're automatically marked down as parochial.

KB: It's usually Scots saying it, as well. They'll ask, "so how do you get on in London?" because they've seen you, a Glaswegian comic in Glasgow playing to a roomful of Glaswegians and shock, horror, you mentioned Glasgow.

Do you feel pressure to "represent" when you play elsewhere?

DS: The accent is the first thing audiences pick up on. But at the Glasgow Comedy Festival, the majority are Glaswegians and they understand your pain and misery. In London, they just think you're bitching.

SC: It's strange that we haven't managed to have the same impact as the Irish, where Ian Coppinger, a wonderful comic goes everywhere and everyone says, "look, there's that lovely Irishman!" There's this feeling that you can't have two Scots on a bill, like you can't have two women. And quite rightly, because we are awful. It's this stereotype that we're all similar. But the four of us sitting here have all got vastly different styles.

KB: I think Scotland's got such a strong identity, though. I did a gig in Saudi Arabia that was supposed to be for ex-pats but it was full of locals. I was backstage thinking there's absolutely **** all I've got in common with these people. But I was completely honest about it and simply talked about their culture – "so is everyone getting sober tonight?" They loved it, yet speaking to them after the gig they wanted to hear about Scotland. It's like gigging in Amsterdam and talking about dope shops, they already know about their own lives.

SC: There's always universality. If you go to Manchester, they're as depressed and pissed off as we are here. More so from what I saw last weekend.

What's the weirdest gig you've ever done?

SA: The Buchanan Street subway!

SC: I did that! The Subway Festival!

SA: You weren't allowed to swear and women with kids were wondering why a man with a microphone was shouting at them. The organisers asked me to do it on the actual train, so I asked about amplification. "Oh, just carry on." "But we're on a moving train!" "Well, just go over and speak to them." No, because that makes me a random nutter.

SC: I took sweets, that's how I got through it, performing to two police officers and three underground staff on a Sunday morning. Just as I was finishing, actual people started turning up, hungover. So there I am: "Hey, hey, hey! Wanna hear a joke!" It probably won't feature in the autobiography.

KB: Shotts Prison was pretty nuts. And a bingo hall in Peterlee, County Durham. Died on my arse at the bingo and ripped the jail. So, pensioners don't like me but murderers do.

SA: There's something quite strange about prison gigs. They shouldn't work in a million years, but they do.

KB: When you compere, you never ask, "so, what do you do for a living?" I used to do a routine about how you get five or six years for attempted murder but life for murder. Why shouldn't you get life, just because you made an arse of it? Well, I started doing that routine and there's these guys grinning, nudging each other and gesturing over to other tables ...

SC: I'm not legally allowed to play prisons because I'd be too inviting for them.

KB: One guy got up and left during my set and I was like, "Christ, where are you going?"

Do you enjoy the stand-up lifestyle?

DS: God bless my mum, that's all I can say. Every morning since December, she's come through at 8.30 in the morning and made me write from 9-5. She sits across the table from me and every now and then she smacks the laptop to make sure I'm not playing games. I think she wants my career to go better than I do, to be honest. She knows I'm done for otherwise.

KB: I started at 17 too, left school, never had a real job. I don't know anything else. I'm conscious that any complaint I've ever had about comedy, it's got to be ten times better than working in an office. I don't see the travel as a pain, it's part of the job.

SC: I've been with my girlfriend for six years, we've got a mortgage and four children/cats. I walk in the door after a weekend away and hand her all my money because she knows what I'm like. And it's difficult because time away doesn't feel like a holiday. I feel guilty that I'm not there to pay the bills or do the ironing and about going for a drink after a gig because I'm supposed to be working. I'm lucky she's so supportive because I was a lawyer when she met me and it was a big change.

SA: It makes it nigh on impossible to start a relationship. You were lucky you were in one already. I try to arrange a date now and realise that I might be able to manage it around mid-July. They're invariably working Monday to Friday, nine to five, I'm working nights from seven. And there's a limit to how many times you can take a first date to a comedy club, because sooner or later you will die on your hole.

Do comedians attract groupies?

KB: Yeah, I keep hearing that too.

SC: Someone once came up to my girlfriend in The Stand's toilets and said, "it must be laugh a minute living with a comic". I don't think we've stopped laughing since.

SA: Some comics get so drunk they'll shag anyone. They don't notice they're shagging a nutter.

SC: I've got a stalker! And there's a few comics that have really scary ones. Reg D Hunter's got a few.

KB: Aye, he's a bam magnet.

SC: It's not true that backstage at the end of a Saturday night it's full of lovely ladies. Only disappointed comics, crying.

DS: I was offered sex once.

SA: An offer!

KB: A formal offer!

DS: You know the response cards at the end of the night? I was at The Stand in Edinburgh and one of my jokes was about being a virgin. Somebody wrote: "Daniel Sloss is the hottest virgin I have ever seen, here's my number." So I thought, "ooh, my mum's in the audience. But that's quite good." Then the compere asked the audience, "who was it?" And suddenly there was this terrible bellowing sound. I declined.

&#149 The Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival runs from 12-29 March. Daniel Sloss performs with Sean Grant and Elaine Malcolmson at Oran Mor on 12 March. Susan Calman Is The Last Woman On Earth at Blackfriars on 20 March. Scott Agnew performs Phillip & Fern Saved My Life at Maggie Mays on 21 March. Kevin Bridges performs A Weekend in the Wild West at Oran Mor on 27 and 28 March, and joins Frankie Boyle at The Stand on 29 March for Gangster Party. For full festival listings, visit www.glasgowcomedyfestival.com