Chris Addison’s Tips

For The Wannabe-Comedian

“The first piece of advice that was ever given to me was ‘Change Your Name’. And I went ‘why, what’s wrong with my name?’ And the person who said it to me said ‘Change your name, it’s the one thing I wish I’d done. You can avoid the tax-man. ‘ And it’s a neat tip, if you’re that kind of low-down law-breaking scum-bag. And you’ll be able to do cash-in-hand work. But if you change your name how will the people that bullied you at school ever find out that it’s you? Not that I was, but there is a vanity aspect. Although there are plenty of top comedians with stage names; Jenny Éclair, Frank Skinner, Mark Lamarr, Vic Reeves. Maybe that’s the secret. I could be Rudy Fryburg…”

“Be prepared to travel.”

“Do it as often as you can. It’s no good doing it once every three or four weeks, you have to try and get as many Open Spots as you can. Keep doing it, that’s the first thing. And a subset of that is – don’t be discouraged. If it doesn’t go well the first time, so what. It takes a lot of learning. But the only way of actually learning it is to keep doing it.”

“I do have some heckle put-downs, but I think generally it’s just better to respond to what the other person is saying.”

“Don’t keep changing your material when you’re an Open Spot, cos you’ll never learn technique otherwise. Once you’ve got material that you KNOW is good, and has got a reasonably good response, stick with it. Don’t ignore writing new material, and you can begin to put it in, but it’s important to learn HOW to be a stand-up comedian, rather than what you’re saying.”

“I started out in Manchester, and I turned out fine.”

“Purge yourself, whatever you do, purge yourself of any chance that you might remotely sound like Eddie Izzard. The amount of Open Spots that I’ve seen going ‘Oooh, yes, mmm, aaaah’. Fuck off! And they don’t know that they’re doing it. The number of people that you see, who clearly have watched ‘The Definite Article’ eighty-nine time! Which is fine, and it’s an extremely funny show, and a genuine comedy genius at the peak of his powers. Having said that – pack it in. It’s a great thing to want to be, but sorry, the post is filled…

I swear to you this is true – when he [Izzard] was still a cult figure, he’d just done his 2^nd big West End show, ‘Unrepeatable’. And this guy got up at an Open Spot night, and he had an Eddie Izzard ‘Unrepeatable’ t-shirt on. Signed. To him. By Eddie Izzard. And then proceeded to go ‘Aah, mmm, blaaah’ onstage. Complete fucking idiot.

So yeah. Don’t sound like any other comic.”

“Be prepared to be knocked down.”

“Nicking jokes is the worst thing you can do. People have been hurt. There are LEGIONS of stories about that. You know how people talk about ‘what is alternative comedy?’ now – the difference between the old and the new comedy is that for the new comedy, the material has to be original. To you. You can have someone else write it for you. But don’t take anyone else’s jokes.”

“And if you still wanna do it after that ear-bashing, then you’re made of the right stuff…”

Last revised: 26/07/01