Interview taken from HermAphrodite #5

So what of Scott’s stand-up history then?

Scott - "I was an actor, and then a comedy club opened that invited gay comics. I'd never been 'out' in my performance before, so I went there and I tried it and really liked it. And I got on the radio right away and built up a listening audience, and then came over here for a film I'd done. And when I did stand-up here it just took off - then after I won the Perrier a year later I just had to do it all the time."

me - "So it wasn't that you were the class-comedian, always looking for attention..?"

Scott - "I had no desire to do comedy, I didn't really grow up with a burning to do it at all."

He just kinda fell into it.

me - "What do you like the best?"

Scott - "I like writing the best... I've written a book; I've tried to make as non-autobiographical as I possibly can. People will probably still think that it's partially me, and some of it is. All fiction is biographical."

"My grandmother turned ninety this year. Out of pure spite."

me - "Have your family come to see you?"

Scott - "Yeah."

me - "Do they mind?"

Scott - "No, they don't mind. My family are much funnier than me, and they're much darker and meaner with their humour than I am... They'd rather I have a more stable home life, but that's all. They don't mind. The way I'm showing then to you is a TENTH of how evil they are. A TENTH. My grandmother is MUCH worse than that. She's EVIL!"

me - "But you do love her?"

Scott - "I don't talk to her anymore. None of the family does. She's really nuts. She sends the police to our home, tells them that we've robbed her. But I like the rest of my family."

And he doesn't joke about absolutely everybody that he knows.

Scott - "Not if they're colourless. I make fun of my step-mother, my sister, my mother. The men in my family are ineffectual. They're kind of in the background. I don't talk about them very much, they're not that interesting to me. A woman saw my act recently and was offended because I make fun of women in my act, but that's because women have affected my life more than men have. Particularly growing up, I was around women all the time. If there were more interesting men in my life I’d talk about them, believe me, I'd love it if I could. I used to talk about my ex-boyfriends onstage..."

"They don't heckle in Amsterdam, they correct you. 'Excuse me, eet is not like zat.'

'Oh, shut the fuck up you Anne Frank killing Jew-hater'... Before the war a million

Jews in Holland, after the war six thousand - I wonder where they all went ?"

me - "I was forewarned that you are kind of obnoxious onstage. But you weren't that bad."

Scott - "I don't think that I'm that obnoxious."

It could just be that he's American.

Scott - "I've been called 'sniping', Julian Clary barbs', and 'bitter and twisted'... I think I'm kind of warm and cuddly onstage, but that's just my opinion. If someone fucks with me then I’ll tear them into asshole, but if the audience are nice... I think I wear my heart on my sleeve too much, I think that's what makes audiences uncomfortable about my material, it's really self-referential and at times arrogant. But I don't think it's that mean. And I TRY not to make anyone victims, I try to be kind of harmless... Like I make fun of Kate Winslet being fat, but I think she deserved it. Like she is a bit chunky in that film [ Titanic ], but the critics said that, and when I read that in the press I thought 'aah that's so mean, that's so funny'. And people got So worked up about it. That's usually my tactic. Like when I say the Queen Mother's a cunt. Part of the reason I say it is because I KNOW that it works up the audience..."

Yup. That and the Anne Frank stuff. Maybe a leeetle bit too far.

Scott - "It's GREAT isn't it. It really gets to people. But it's true - people don't know that the Dutch were really unsympathetic to the Jews. All that's been glossed over. And I brought it up when I was I Amsterdam last summer and the Dutch got really defensive about it, and I thought 'oh this is a subject I have to talk about, it really pisses people off.'... And you can't talk to the French about it, so of course when I play in Paris I do the same thing to them. The French voluntarily put the Jews on the trains and sent them to Germany, you know, and you can't ignore it. And the Jewish people are the first to joke about it, it's not offensive to them... It's just that middle-class white guilt."

"The middle-class accent only scares Americans... Whenever they have an evil character

in film or TV shows in America he or she always has a middle-class English accent."

Scott - "Americans know what they're like here. People think Americans don't travel but they do. They know what England's like. That's why they don't come here very much."

me - "What gets to you the most?"

Scott - "What gets to me the most is the way that Americans are patronised here, CONSTANTLY. I can only take it for a while... You wouldn't notice, but every time I read an article in a newspaper, it always goes back to Americans. It can't all be our fault. Everything, from the economy to plastic-surgery."

He has a couple of ideas as to general improvements to the country as well.

Scott - "Food on Sundays would be nice. And ice. And air-conditioning. There's a standard of living that I'm accustomed to back home that you just don't get here - unless you're rich."

Given the weather here, we don't usually have need of the later in quite the same all-year-round way. But point taken. And not everything about Britain niggles at him.

Scott - "I don't really miss that much [ in America ]. And there's so much here that I don't get back home. People here are just smarter - the middle-classes are better educated, so conversation is better. Newspapers are better - I read more when I'm here."

And yes, he is always hyper-aware of his surroundings.

Scott - "Yeah, I try to take ideas from everything."

me - "And you never stop thinking."

Scott - ( grins ) "I try not to stop thinking."

S’not what I meant, though it probably is for the best, that. Else his brain really would have turned to soufflé. And then where would the world be?

"I want a clitoris SO BAAAD."

Scott Capurro. He’s coming for you. He wants to make you laugh, and think. And he’s coming wearing oven-mitts.

Last revised: 26/07/01