You might not have heard about Daniel Sloss recently, but he’s certainly not disappeared from the circuit. Instead, he’s taken his fiery wit overseas to America, where he’s been met by great success on The Late Late Show and Conan. Now, he’s gravitated back to Edinburgh for another sell-out tour…
You’re taking your tour, Dark, to the Exeter Phoenix in November. Are you excited to visit the West Country?
We (myself and my tour support, best friend and flatmate Kai Humphries) are very much looking forward to coming back to Exeter. We had never been to Exeter before our tour two years ago and we were absolutely blown away by the audience. Sometimes when you’ve never been somewhere before you can get a little bit worried about the audience, and whether they’ll know you/be up for your comedy, but we had such a good gig we ran over by 30 minutes. Which was great for us, but awful for anyone who had babysitters at home. So, sorry about that. But not really.
The world of comedy seems a very daunting one to enter into, yet you started at a young age and have enjoyed incredible success. What’s your best advice for young stand-up comics?
Just fucking do it. Stop thinking about it. Do it. If you want to do it. Do it. (I sound like Shia LeBeouf). One of the biggest regrets I hear from a lot of comedians is that they wish they’d started sooner. It’s not about being good. It’s just about getting that stage time, getting used to being in front of an audience and working out whether it’s something you want to do. I love the fact that I started young. Because I was shit, but you know what? Nobody remembers it. I hardly even remember it. But, it sent me down the path that I’m on now and I love it. Bite the bullet.
“DO IT. IF YOU WANT TO DO IT. DO IT.”
You’ve done a lot of stand-up in America recently – what do you make of the differences between British and American humour?
British audiences can be a bit harder to impress, they want punchlines and they want you to prove to them that you’re funny. You have to earn the laughs. Which is great. It helped me become a better comic and start trimming the fat off my comedy. But American audiences are brilliant for diff erent reasons. They’re a bit more optimistic and patient. So you get to explore “bits”. Having a bit more time to deliver a punchline means you can perform more.
You’re currently back in Edinburgh for the Fringe – are you particularly proud of being Scottish around this time?
I love being Scottish this time of year. Scottish people are hugely supportive and proud of their own. So it means my shows always sell out. I get to play to a big, beautiful and loving crowd. It really gives me time and confidence to work on the show before I bring it on tour.
Your jokes appear quite often on social media, especially the routine where you say your mum gave birth to you and then was “diagnosed” with your brother. What advice would you give to other people coping with the horrific torment of siblings?
Wait until they grow up. I hated my brothers when I was younger. I was a teen, they were kids, we fought all the time. But now I realise I probably should’ve been a bit more patient and just let things slide. But I was so up my own ass that I thought I knew everything. I still do, obviously, but I take it out on them less. Now we just hang out and muck around because they’re fi nally old enough that I consider them to be real people now. Kids suck.
Do you have any funny stories about being heckled?
Not particularly. Fortunately, my audience don’t tend to interrupt. I don’t really talk to my audience individually, more of a collective, as if they were just a much larger group of friends. And I know my jokes and I know what I want to say, and it’s a lot funnier than anything a drunken moron has to say. That being said, when I was 17, a group on a hen-do slapped a man who was heckling me in the back of the head and said, in a very thick Glasgow accent, “You let that little boy finish”. Which was nice, but also quite insulting.
Finally… WKD or VK?
I’m more of a G&T type of gal. Back in the day I would go for VK, coz it was cheaper, but after many nights ended in me vomiting up a rainbow, I decided to move to better drinks.
