A nice chat with Elis James: Edinburgh Fringe

 

It is called Do You Remember The First Time, and it's currently 51 minutes and 35 seconds long, which I'm very happy with. It's a collection of stories of things that have happened to me over the last few years, some things from childhood as well and friends I used to knock about with. This year there's no grand theme, it's just me trying to be as funny as possible in the time I'm allowed.

 

The slightly annoying thing with Edinburgh is you have to come with your title more often than not before the show is written. So I have lots of ideas floating around about things I could do or have considered doing, put them all on to a piece of A4 paper, and thought, what's the show most likely to be about. It was about 80% accurate. Although one anecdote on the flyer has been shown in preview after preview not to work.

 

I don't know if the bloody things have been printed yet so I don't know.

 

It's on cycling helmets. If anyone is coming to my show just for the cycling helmet joke they're going to be quite disappointed. It's one of those ideas that I said and people laughed, and the first time I did it it went quite well, but since then it's been proven to be not quite good enough and so it will probably be chopped.

 

I like a bit of heckling. If people want to heckle me for not having enough cycle helmet related jokes in my show, that is something that I can offer that very few other comics at Fringe can offer.

 

Yeah. And now I've got a week to think of cycling helmet-related putdowns. I've already got 40 to 50 but I'll need about 80 to get through the whole season.

 

Alright. Although I've had some previews in basements in pubs to 15 confused people, some who don't speak English. But the last few have been alright. I think the most important thing before Fringe is to recalibrate your expectations so they are as low as possible, and then once you've done that it shouldn't be too heartbreaking.

 

My expectations get a bit lower every year I do Edinburgh. So by 2015 I'll be going up thinking, I won't even be alive by the end of this.

 

I had one at the Leicester Square Theatre last week after having had a very bad day and not having eaten, and I thought I'd lost the notebook with the entire show in it. And I wouldn't say I took it out on the audience, but I certainly didn't give it everything. To all the people at the Leicester Square Theatre I apologise because it wasn't a tip top performance.

 

Yeah. Halfway through the show I was thinking, just try harder. And I got my notebook sent back by a kind stranger. 

 

Yeah, you'd be a lunatic not to. There are a thousand shows, and also the best comedians on Earth are at the festival. And if don't worry then you've either got an ego the size of Canada, or you're deluded. I'm a better Edinburgh animal than I first went up but it's still daunting. 

 

2009 I was a drinker, 2010 I was a worker, this year I'm hoping to combine the two. There'll be the odd medicinal brandy in there somewhere.

 

I'm now 30. I started when I was 24. While my likes probably haven't changed enormously, I've found my voice and I now know what I'm good at. I'm awful at one-liners, I accept that isn't my strength so I've stopped trying to do it. I think that while the comedy I watch on TV and DVDs is very eclectic, I know what it is I'm best at. As a comedian, when you immerse yourself in something there are things you look for and are impressed with that might not be the same as for normal punters. 

 

The first circuit stand-up I saw was at the Cardiff Glee Club and the standard is very high there. They get the best comics in Britain. And now I get to be one of those comics and go there quite regularly. But when I went there in 2003 as a student, all the little tricks that circuit comics employ, I hadn't seen before and I thought they were absolute geniuses. So as a consequence I think that like if you study English literature, the books you read are different to if you're someone who buys books at airports. Having now been a comic for six years my tastes have gotten slightly more sophisticated, but are at the same time the same. I still go back to the stuff I loved as a teenager – I'm still an enormous fan of Alan Partridge, The Day Today, Spaced.

 

I was on Dave's One Night Stand. It went really well and it'll be going out in autumn. And I'm on Rob Brydon on August 5th, so that's a good time for Edinburgh. And I'm in Chris Addison's Show and Tell in September as well; I've heard the show looks great in the edit.

 

The stuff I've done I've been happy to do because it's me doing what I do best, stand-up comedy. I have no desire to be a TV presenter or a TV personality. So the TV stuff I've done so far has been a fair reflection of what I do five nights a week. 

 

I've had a radio show commissioned on Radio Wales so that needs writing and finished for November, I have another pilot for Radio Wales that we will hear about soon, and lots of irons in the fire that I'm waiting to hear on. I think September to December should be quite exciting.