“I wouldn't say I'm conventionally famous. I never get recognized. People don't run up to me, people don't wait for me at the backstage door. I don't do any of those things. The content of the show is still the most important part to me – the actual quality of the actual show. And I always work backwards from that. Any sort of publicity or marketing, any of that kind of rubbish, I do lack.”
– Danny Bhoy
Guy MacPherson: Hi Danny.
Danny Bhoy: Hi, Guy, how are you?
GM: I'm well. How are you?
DB: Not too bad, my friend. Not too bad.
GM: Where are you?
DB: I'm in Montreal. Old Town Montreal. Very pretty.
GM: You're on your tour across Canada?
DB: Yeah, I am. We just had a night off so I wanted to come back to Montreal because I like it. And it's a good place to spend a night off when you're in this part of the world.
GM: Is it cold there?
DB: It's not too bad. I've been out this morning. I had to have a little bit of protection but not too bad.
GM: Clothing protection, not weapons.
DB: (laughs) Yeah, yeah, yeah! That's right, yeah. I didn't go to the dangerous part of Papineau.
GM: I talked to you in 2012, seven years ago.
DB: Yeah, I remember.
GM: You said when you go across Canada – and you've been here numerous times – it's usually just hotel, sound check, something to eat, and on to the next town. At least with Montreal, you get to go out and see it a bit.
DB: Yeah. What I did with this tour is I said I don't want to do more than six shows a week, so that guaranteed at least one day off and a day where I don't have to travel. Part of that is to save my voice, to be honest with you. Also to give me a day where I don't have to think about comedy. It's been a bit better this tour. I've had a couple days off here and there. It's been nice.
GM: On the days of your shows, are you thinking about it or do you just wait until an hour or so before?
DB: I think it's there all day. It's like a little niggle all day in your head. I always say on a show day, I can never completely relax. I can watch TV or read a book or whatever, but I'm always ever-so-slightly distracted by the fact that I have a show that night. It's only on days where I wake up and I know I've got no show at all that night that I can fully sort of tune out. But I say that and this morning I woke up and I wrote a joke. So I don't know whether the system works!
GM: Will it go into your show? Will you try it? Or will you wait until you get a new show?
DB: I'll do it in Calgary tomorrow night. Or Thursday night, yeah.
GM: Did it just come to you or was it a conscious 'I'm going to write a joke'?
DB: No, it more or less came to me. This morning I woke up and I was just lying in bed and I thought about something and I thought, 'Where can I put that?' So I raced through the show in my head and went, 'Oh yeah, it can go there.' It's not a huge risk. It'll just sneak in there and if it works, great. And if not, well, it comes out again.
GM: You gotta give it a few tries.
DB: You gotta, yeah.
GM: When you write your shows – and they're about 90 minutes?
DB: This one's running about 80.
GM: Is it piecemeal like that? Or do you sit down and write a show with a theme? Or is it stuff that you cobble together?
DB: To be honest, they're all sort of different, Guy. This one is called Age of Fools. I gave it that title and sort of set myself the task of writing a semi-topical, political-type show. I wouldn't necessarily say it's worked out that way, but it certainly gave it an overall theme, which meant I could bring in other stuff. But that's largely how I work. I come up with two or three ideas and then I think, 'Is there a general theme developing here?' And then I start writing around that.
GM: Is it writing as in lying in bed thinking of it or is it sitting down at a computer or pen and paper?
DB: I don't know if writing or thinking is the best way... I don't actually write out jokes; I go out for a walk or just sit and think. I try not to write the joke exactly verbatum because then that's the way I'll say it. I like to just sketch a few words and then let it come out on stage so I might say it more naturally.
GM: Walking is great for creativity. These days, I think, we always have something in our ears, whether it's a podcast or music, and we don't give ourselves the chance to just think.
DB: That's true. I totally agree with that. I've got about three or four little secret spots in Edinburgh that I go to where I don't take any devices and just do a little bit of soul-searching.
GM: So you still live in Edinburgh?
DB: Yeah.
GM: When you're not on tour, are you living the life of a comedian, going out to rooms and clubs and working on things or are you just away from it for a good stretch?
DB: A bit of both, to be honest. Usually after a tour, I hunker down and don't do anything for a bit. When I then start the process of writing a new show again, I go out and do all the clubs and stuff. I've got a local club in Edinburgh which always, luckily, puts me on that night if I have something I want to try out. So I sort of blitz it a bit when a show goes on sale or when I put it in the diary. That's the time when I start writing from. I'm not a comedy junkie; I don't every day have that pressure. I'm sort of a seasonal comic, if you like. Two or three tours a year and I work to them. But outside of that, I do normal stuff.
GM: Like what?
DB: Normal stuff. Like, I don't know. I'm doing up my house a bit at the moment. I play football. I read. I catch up with some friends. I just do very, very normal stuff. Nothing too taxing.
GM: Are you single? Married? Family?
DB: I'm single, yes. One of the problems with touring six months of the year is it's quite hard to maintain a relationship so I haven't been in a relationship for the best part of ten years. So that is something I might have to work on soon, Guy.
GM: Well, you've got your football buddies you can hang out with.
DB: I've got my football buddies, yeah. They don't give quite the same emotional support.
GM: Probably not!
DB: But yeah, I know what you mean.
GM: But you're free to do more things, though, being the single guy.
DB: Well, it's good in terms of spontaneity. You know, if I wanted to just go to London for a weekend or buy a cat or do something a little bit offbeat, I know I don't have to ask anyone. So that's the good thing. Maybe the problem is I've got a bit used to that now and I've kind of embraced it a bit too much. I don't know. We'll see what happens.
GM: You say you're not addicted to comedy where you have to get on stage all the time. Some comics say if they miss even a couple of weeks, their timing is way off.
DB: Yeah, the first couple of gigs back after some time off is always a bit weird. But I tend to find I find my vibe on stage. So I'm more nervous before I walk on stage, and then as soon as I get on stage, it's just like muscle memory, really – it just kicks in and you remember what you do again. I think it's like anything. If you don't do any kind of routine that you break out of for two or three weeks, that first thing back is just you going, 'Shit, what is this again? What do I do with my hands? What do I do with my face?'
GM: You seem very calm, cool and collected. Do you get nervous all the way through the tour before a show?
DB: I always get a little bit nervous before I walk on stage. And I don't ever want to lose that. That kind of nervous energy drives you a bit and makes me a little bit more alert. I would worry if I sort of strolled on with a cup of tea and started chatting normally. It's not really my style. I need to get a little bit worked up before I get on stage.
GM: I like that image. Is there anyone in the UK who comes out with a cup of tea?
DB: (laughs) There probably is, you know? I can see certain comics in my head strolling on with a nice soothing cup of hot chocolate. It wouldn't suit my style. I have more energy and physicality.
GM: Right. So you couldn't have a hot drink in your hand.
DB: I'd have to have an armchair on stage. I'd have to have the whole look. It would have to be an armchair and a pair of drapes in the background.
GM: And an ascot.
DB: Yeah. 'Gather round and let me tell you a story.'
GM: Maybe twenty, thirty years from now...
DB: Oh, don't rule it out! Do not rule it out.
GM: I'm fascinated by your tours to Canada because you're able to sell out big theatres and you have this following without the constant presence. How are you able to do that?
DB: To be honest, I really don't know. I'm quite consistent in the fact that I don't tour a show until I know it's good. And I don't have much of that sort of pressure from agents and managers and stuff. It's a weird thing happening at the moment where if you get a little bit of fame or a TV show or whatever, then the pressure is on you to then go out and tour. Then you go back to doing your show and then you go out on tour again. I've never been driven by the economics of standup, the financial side of it. So for me, I don't mind if it takes me two years to write a new show. I'd rather do that and put all my effort into it and make sure it's good. I just make sure the show's great when it tours. I've done my bit then. I think people appreciate that there's a lot of work that goes into these. They know that it's every two years or so and it's something that's hopefully worth their while. I have the same approach that Daniel Day Lewis had to making films (laughs). He tossed away three or four scripts but then made sure the one he was doing was something that he could put his heart and soul into.
GM: And word of mouth is a powerful tool.
DB: I hope so. Obviously you and I can both think that and the technological world will argue against us, but I still believe there is that power of the word of mouth that drives my career. But it's a harder thing to argue now with all the various Twitters and Facebooks and all that kind of stuff.
GM: I've seen plenty of "celebrity" comics, famous for TV or movies, and they come do a standup show and it's just okay. You can tell it's just a rushed effort. That may be great for capitalizing on the fame that you have at a given moment but not for when you might want to return.
DB: Yeah, absolutely. I wouldn't say I'm conventionally famous. I never get recognized. People don't run up to me, people don't wait for me at the backstage door. I don't do any of those things. The content of the show is still the most important part to me – the actual quality of the actual show. And I always work backwards from that. Any sort of publicity or marketing, any of that kind of rubbish, I do lack. I wait till I've got the show first.
GM: Brian Regan is a guy like you who just sells out big theatres without any presence on TV or movies. He told me he could go to a coffee shop two blocks away from the theatre he's playing or played and no one would know who he is.
DB: Absolutely, yeah. It's something which ten years ago used to frustrate me, and now it's the best part of my career, the fact that I literally can walk around during the day and do all the things which I want to do and occasionally someone will come up and ask for a photo or whatever, but very rarely. It's the thing, I think, that other comics more famous than me might envy about me now, which certainly wasn't the case ten years ago.
GM: When you're younger you want the fame or recognition.
DB: Now also the actual payoff for being famous is far less than it used to be because so many people are able to be famous now. There are YouTube stars nowadays that haven't really done anything; they just get 50 million people watch their clip in their bedroom and the next thing they're recognizable everywhere they go. So it's good to be only recognized for the thing that you're most proud of and the thing you do the best.
GM: Has anything else changed in the ten years? Have the topics you talk about or the style you deliver them in changed?
DB: The style hasn't changed too much. What I do is every show I do, I try and make it markedly different from the last show. The tour before the last one I did a show called Dear Epson and it was very theatrical. I had a desk on stage and a set. I liked it because it was so different from the show before. And then the show after that, the last show I did, was very different from that. And this show is very different from the last show. It's still me; the style of comedy is still mine, but the actual topic or the themes are, well I think more grown up, really, which is maybe just a byproduct of getting older.
GM: Do you act as well?
DB: I don't do any acting, no. The only acting I do is bad acting and that is within the context of a show.
GM: Surely people must want you to?
DB: Well, less and less. I think pretty much people know now that I'm not really interested in doing TV or film, movies or any of that kind of stuff. So I tend not to get bothered, really. Which is good. It means I've got more time to put into the thing I love, which is standup.
GM: That's rare. So many standups want to branch out and become more famous through roles in movies and TV shows.
DB: It was never part of the long-term strategy for me. I always just wanted to do this. I'm lucky. I get to do it around the world and play nice theatres. I wouldn't want to move up, and I don't particularly want to move down, so I'm at the level I want to be at. When I was a kid, you know, I used to go to the theatre and I loved it. I always dreamed I would play theatres and that's what I do. I think it's a perfect environment for the kind of thing I do, as well.
GM: Do you mean you used to go to plays?
DB: Yeah, yeah. I used to go when I was a kid. I used to get really excited. A lot of my friends would be going off to movie theatres and I used to prefer the theatre, going to see plays and stuff when I was a kid. So I don't know if that means the genesis of this career was planted when I was very young or not, but at least subconsciously I always love walking into a theatre for some reason.
GM: But you didn't want to be an actor. So there was that divergence there. You just liked the venue.
DB: Yeah. The venue's what I'm talking about, yeah, yeah. I just love the feel of the theatre. We're very lucky in Britain because we've got these magnificent 18th and 19th century theatres that are dripping in gold and red. They just don't make them like that anymore. I just always got quite giddy with excitement when I used to walk into them. I don't know what it is. The history, perhaps.
GM: Well, you're a history major so that makes sense. Is your standup more subjective – storytelling – or observational? Or a mix of the two?
DB: Without giving too much away, this show that I'm doing now is slightly more partisan than my last shows, but it sort of needs to be because the whole idea was to write a show about this moment in time. Naturally everything now is viewed through the prism of your beliefs, whether they be political or religious or whatever. It's hard to create a show that's funny but inclusive as well when you're writing about this particular time we're living in.
GM: So it is political?
DB: Parts of it are. I've tried to steer away from saying political because when I first started doing this show, about a year ago, I used to walk on stage and say, 'Every time I do something different and this year I've written a political show.' I literally could hear the audience exhale with disappointment because no one wants to hear that, at the moment. Everyone wants to get away from politics. Everyone wants that escapism of being in the theatre and not having to think about how bad things are. But I enjoyed the fact that over the course of the show – I knew what was coming up in my head, that I would turn them around, because it doesn't feel like a political show. It's a political show, if you like, that doesn't feel like a political show. But now I've dropped the word 'political' and I just say 'topical' because it's just less of an uphill battle in the first few minutes.
GM: So topical.
DB: To be honest, it's not even topical anymore. It's relevant rather than topical. It's stuff about now rather than stuff from previous shows about childhood or whatever.
GM: Is it your view on society?
DB: Kind of, yeah. Like I said, it's very hard to stand up on stage for 80 minutes and talk about the world without giving your own views away otherwise it would be frankly a bit dull, if I was doing just sort of open-ended comedy that can appeal to everyone. So there are definitely jokes which some people won't like, and that's fine, and jokes that other people will like. It's just the nature of the beast this time.
GM: That's just comedy, too, in general.
DB: Yeah. The thing about it is it's a bit different because, again, ten years ago if you did an offensive joke, you knew it would split a room. Whereas now you can do a joke that's a really good joke but because the set-up is divisive, it can split a room. So it's quite hard to get jokes which are for everyone now. Someone made the point the other day that if the very premise of the set-up is debatable then the punchline is very hard to do.
GM: I know that when I hear a set-up that makes me think of an alternative, it loses me a bit in the follow-up.
DB: Yeah, which can be quite a problem. For example, if I did an atheist joke or whatever, there's going to be people that don't like it no matter how good the joke is. But that's more polarizing now because now everyone's in their own camps. Politically everyone's very entrenched in their Twitter worlds so it's quite hard. But I've managed it. There's no way that anyone will come to this show and not go away laughing, even despite the fact it might not have been of the same views as them.
GM: I can always separate the two. I can like a comedian even if I disagree with his views usually.
DB: It sounds like you're the perfect comedy member.
GM: Except I'm not a big laugher, that's the only problem.
DB: I don't mind that, to be honest.
GM: I appreciate it. In my head, I'm going, 'Oh, that's funny!'
DB: You enjoy the craft.
GM: Yeah! I do. And I respect it. If you can get me with something I don't agree with, that's pretty good. It doesn't mean I'm going to change my mind, necessarily.
DB: And that's the point. I don't want people to change their mind. But to answer your original question, you do have to be slightly more subjective.
GM: Do you care less now that you're older about pleasing everybody?
DB: Absolutely. One hundred percent. It's inevitable. If a gig goes badly, if a joke goes badly... At the beginning of this conversation I said I'm putting in a joke tomorrow night. If it doesn't go well, it wouldn't bother me. I don't get as stressed as I used to about the idea of perfection. It's a product of going to see other stuff and other standups. I quite like an imperfect comedian, an imperfect show, because they're slightly more human. I know there's enough laughs in the show for it to be a good show. If I want to put in a little thing that's just for some people, that's fine.
GM: How many shows across Canada are you playing?
DB: I think we're doing about thirty. It's funny because I do Australia and New Zealand and I did twice that many. But I think in this side of the world it's seen as quite a lot. I was speaking to Just For Laughs, who do the tour, who said, 'You do the most shows in Canada. When we tour any comedian, you're the one that does the most actual shows.' Again, that could be due to me being single and not having to get home to do family stuff! Maybe I've just got that time in my schedule. But I don't mind it. I enjoy the variety of travelling across Canada. It's a good country to see. It's a very fascinating country to see east to west.
GM: You don't go too far north, though.
DB: I tend not to. Partly, it's not my decision. It's more that there isn't the availability or the sustainability of doing a comedy show up there. I think I've been to Medicine Hat a couple of times. That's about as far north as I've been.
GM: Edmonton is farther north. [So is Calgary.]
DB: Oh, maybe, I don't know. Maybe I've got that wrong. Edmonton I've done many times.
GM: You've got to get up to the territories. I've never been up there, of course.
DB: It's the same. There are parts of Scotland I'm embarrassed to say I've never seen.
GM: Well, when you say you're doing thirty shows in Canada, I'm thinking, do we have thirty cities?
DB: Ha, well, no. Thirty shows is sometimes two shows. I did two in Montreal, I did two in Toronto. And then Toronto's interesting because you end up doing all this sort of satellite cities around it, so you do Hamilton and Kingston and all these kind of things.
GM: And you're doing Vancouver and Surrey, which to me is the same city, but it's not really.
DB: Yeah, yeah.
GM: Where are you going after Canada?
DB: Home. Home is next. I'll be home for Christmas. I haven't put anything in for next year yet. So I'll take a month or so off and try and work out what the next move is.
GM: Fix up the house.
DB: Fix up the house, yeah. Do a little bit of DIY. Put some shelves up. Read some books. Put the books on the shelf and buy some more books.
GM: Sounds like a plan. Alright, Danny, nice talking with you again.
DB: And you, Guy. All the best, my friend. Take care.