Interview: Stuart Goldsmith (Comedy Box, March 10)

Sharp-as-tacks comic and former street performer Stuart Goldsmith brings his new show, the Edinburgh Fringe sell-out Compared to What, to Bristol this month. Stuart’s Comedian’s Comedian podcast, featuring his in-depth interviews with leading lights of the comedy world, is into the multi-millions of downloads (and is one of Ricky Gervais’ favourite shows).
He’s recently returned home to Bristol, where he spent the first six years of his life.

Tell us what you’ve learned from interrogating the likes of Jimmy Carr, Russell Howard and Sarah Millican.
That there are as many approaches to comedy as there are comedians. In the beginning I thought there was some ‘proper’ way to be a comic. A lot of comics think like that; perhaps the really successful ones learn faster that there’s another way!
The best moment in a comedian’s life is when a new bit of material works. And that moment is the same whether you’re playing to five people or 5,000.

You recently argued about privilege with American superstar Bill Burr. How’d that go?
I said that you can be privileged and still have a terrible life, which the very punchy Bill Burr said was “vague horseshit”. To be fair, the word ‘privilege’ is misleading because people think it means you fly around in a helicopter made of cocaine, but in terms of social dynamics it just means you don’t experience the same entrenched prejudices as someone else. So a man and a woman might both be poor, disenfranchised, bullied at work – but on their way home she’s getting cat-called and he isn’t. He’s experiencing ‘male privilege’ and doesn’t know it. It doesn’t mean he’s rich or powerful, just that that one extra thing she has to put up with doesn’t exist for him. 

Good to have you back in Bristol. How’s it changed while you’ve been away?
Given that I left when I was six, the main way Bristol has changed is that my friend Graeme and I have lost touch – which is a shame because his Mum worked in a cake shop. Graeme, if you’re reading this, any chance you can wangle me an éclair?
After Bristol, I grew up in the Midlands and lived in London for 14 years – before moving back due to having a Bristolian baby. Apparently sometimes they just come out like that: seemed only fair to take him home. 
I love being here, particularly as Londoners are coming here in droves and I get to play the local card and complain about them all driving up the price of a roast. 

You’re on a mission to find out how your fellow comedians write and improvise material. Have you always been interested in the mechanics of comedy?
I was the kid who’d come into school and perform sketches I’d memorised from the previous night’s telly. As a teenager I went to Edinburgh to do street shows every August at the Fringe, so I saw people like Lee Mack and Mitchell & Webb when they were just starting. I used to sit in the front row and laugh too loudly at all the implied stuff that the Saturday-night audiences weren’t getting.

How would you describe your own comedy style to a Stu novice?
An apparently confident man revelling in his own flaws and social anxieties, and complaining about stuff that’s obviously brilliant. But with jokes. 

Stuart Goldsmith plays the Comedy Box at the Hen & Chicken on March 10. For more info, visit www.thecomedybox.co.uk

Find Stuart’s podcast at www.comedianscomedian.com

Top pic: Richard Lakos