"There's Plenty of Danny..."


Daniel Kitson

In the middle of the interview, Daniel Kitson has gone to answer the phone, taking the tape recorder with him. He explains to the person on the other end that he's being interviewed. "They've clearly heard I'm going to win the Perrier," he says with a grin, "so they're here. To get a piece of the Danny pie."

" I think it's in the stars that Daniel Kitson will spread mirth through the world with his charming use of vulgar vocabulary."

The first time we saw Daniel Kitson live was also the first time we had visited the infamous Late N Live during the Edinburgh Festival. We walked in on the middle of the set, while the rowdy, boisterous crowd looked ready to erupt, and he was in the process of dealing with a particularly irritating heckler. One put down followed another in a steady stream of profane invention, each with explicit reference to the heckler's mother. Sounds crude? It certainly was. But it was also an astonishing display of word-play and comic invention. "Another classic Danny slam!" he yells triumphantly, and the crowd to wild. Watching from the back, the act seems more akin to lion taming or bull fighting than a comedy show - he has to ability to push the crowd so far, but keep them from teetering over the edge. It takes some gusts to get up on stage in front of a crowd, even more in front of a drunken late night crowd, and even more so if you've got a stutter and inch thick glasses.

Welcome on board the Danny train. This is the Kitson we all know and love. The spekky, stuttering "spaz" (his own words) with a fine line in ad-libbing, self-deprecation and an extensive vocabulary of rude words. Until now. "In the last few months I've been thinking, I don't want to do sort of cock and arse stuff all the time. I want to do stuff which I think about. I think it's probably a phase which all comedians go through. 'I don't want to say cock any more, I want to say sublimation.'"

Phase or not, Daniel is heading down a whole new avenue, and it's one that he's quite excited about. "I like doing stuff which people don't reasonably expect me to do," he says with his characteristic cheeky grin. "This sounds really pretentious, but I had to let myself not do as well as I had been doing to get to do the sort of stuff that I wanted to be doing… you have to take a step back from it if you want to refind the right path." He grimaces apologetically. "When I said that to [Alan] Cochrane, he took the piss out of me for about a fortnight." His website also reflects this change, warning in the introduction of a "slower, more thoughtful and whimsical pace" to his new one-man shows. "Obviously", it adds, "I still say the word cock. So don't panic."

"I'm just a comic genius. I didn't chose to be a comic genius, it's just a gift. When you're a comic genius, you don't ask why am I a comic genius, you say I'm a fucking comic genius."

All of this from a man whose original ambition was to be a tramp. Daniel began doing open spots while at college studying drama in Roehampton University, but his stand up career started a few years before then. "I used to record me doing stand up in my bedroom, and then take the tape to this girl's house, Jane, who I really fancied. So what I'd do was I'd do subtle stand up about when you fancy someone. Stuff like 'you know what it's like when you fancy someone called Jane…' I'd go round, and she'd listen to them, and I'd look at her…"

Moving on from that, Daniel was a finalist in the 1995 BBC Open Mic Award (which was won that year by Julian Barratt). His assured, relaxed performance on the night caused host Barry Cryer to announce "I felt sick". He went on to win the 1998 Hackney Empire New Act of the Year Award, and hasn't looked back since. His career path, he says, was inevitable. "I didn't feel that I had to do anything specific to make it happen, I just knew it would happen." So, it was fate then? He laughs. "Yes, I think it's in the stars that Daniel Kitson will spread mirth through the world with his charming use of vulgar vocabulary," he says, warming to his theme. "I'm just a comic genius. I didn't chose to be a comic genius, it's just a gift. When you're a comic genius, you don't ask why am I a comic genius, you say I'm a fucking comic genius." He is then lost in a fit of giggles.

"Our kind of crowd! Dirty minded Downs Syndrome people! Bring 'em on! We've found our level!"

But for all the false bravado, he has his feet firmly on the ground. We bring up the topic of the Perrier Award, and he is quick to dismiss the hype that is already building around his Edinburgh show. "I'm quite defiantly not bothered about it. It's dangerous. People keep saying I'm going to win, so then you start looking at who is going up and thinking, right, who is it between? But that's just nonsense, really. I don't believe it." We ask him to give us some good reasons to go and see the show. "I dunno. It'd be quite funny… I hate that. My automatic inclination is to tell people not to come, because then if people come it means that people actually want to come." This is a philosophy he also applied to his flyering techniques in 1999. Walking past me in the courtyard of the Pleasance, he almost apologetically handed me a flyer for the show and then turned away saying "I wouldn't bother going if I were you, love."

That year he appeared in two shows, along with regular appearances at Late N Live. As well as appearing alongside Andrew Maxwell and Trevor Lock in 'The Number One Show' (a show that garnered very mediocre reviews, as, say Daniel, they were all "comedically opposed to each other"), he brought The Monkey Touchers with Lee Canterbury. Performing in the back of a moving lorry, the show attracted small but healthy audience numbers, but one night in particular stands out for him. Watching from behind a curtain as the audience file in to the van, he was stunned to see a full special needs class, complete with their carers, fill up the seats. "At the start of the show, we had this announcement which Lee did over the microphone: "In tonight's show, the parts of 'cock', 'piss' and 'twat' will be played by…" and we could normally tell if it was going to be a fun gig by their reaction to that. If we heard people tutting, then it was going to be hard work, and if people were having a bit of a giggle then it would be quite good fun. And Lee said the word 'cock', and they went ballistic! And we went Wa-hey-hey! Our kind of crowd! Dirty minded Downs Syndrome people! Bring 'em on! We've found our level!"

"It's clearly the best job ever. So you don't want to go, actually, I've changed my mind. Give me a suit and pencil."

Having found his true calling in life, he says he'd never consider doing anything else. "It's clearly the best job ever. So you don't want to go, actually, I've changed my mind. Give me a suit and pencil." As for future ambitions? "Basically, I just want to become a very good comedian. So when people talk about very good comedians, I'm somewhere in the midst. I don't particularly want to be famous… even if you're the most famous stand up in stand up, you're still not that famous in the grand scheme of things. So I'd like to be the best stand up. The bestest one."

Ride the Danny train at www.danielkitson.com