I’ve Never Had a Salary. Here’s What I’ve Learned

0:00Stuart Goldsmith:This episode was made possible by Vanta. If you're building a business and you need to prove that you're compliant with security standards like GDPR or SOC 2, then Vanta can save you a lot of time and money. You can book a demo using the link in the description.

0:17I just started doing street shows at age 16, me on the bus with the money. I don't ever have to need a boss. I don't ever have to have a pay packet. This is it. From performing on the streets at 16 to becoming a stand-up comedian, Stuart Goldsmith has never had a salary. I've got like 14 bank accounts because I've got ADHD, an entrepreneurial spirit, one or two small revenue streams, and the system has become completely untenable. 14 bank accounts. Welcome to the podcast, Stuart. Thanks for joining us. And if you don't know, this is Toby, who's filling in for Damien while he recovers. Happy to be here.

0:51Welcome. Appreciate you. Thank you for having me. I don't want to interrupt immediately, but I love the extent to which you composed yourself before starting. That's a little bit the listener and the viewer probably doesn't get to see. We were chatting and you were like, into the zone. Lock in. Cameras on, game time. Stuart, though, I love a bit of risk. Not as much as Damien, apparently. But you started off your career as a street performer, which is, I mean, maybe a bit too risky for me. How was it? How did you find it not knowing how much you're going to earn every day, not having a stable salary?

1:21Oh, man, I get asked about it constantly, but no one ever asks about the financial aspect of it. So yes, it was a very hand-to-mouth kind of a life. I was in a double act initially, so there was someone to share the experiences with, but also you've got to cut the money in half. Everything else about being in a double act is brilliant, but the money's half. So I started when we were teenagers. Me and my best mate, Noel, did these shows in Stratford-upon-Avon. Then he lived in Manchester, so we did shows in Manchester. And then we separated. He wanted to stay with his band, so I went down to London on my own and did Covent Garden for four or five years.

1:52And yes, it's very hand-to-mouth, but then it was all, because it was all I knew, like the first really seminal money experience, I guess, of my life was being 16 years old with Noel on the bus on the way back from Stratford, Stratford-upon-Avon, counting like maybe 30 quid in cash in a bowler hat. And this is 30 odd years ago. And we looked at each other and we both went, we need never get real jobs. So do you know what I mean? So it started this whole kind of, Oh, later in life, I've had an adult ADHD diagnosis, like very many comedians. And I've realized that, oh, a big pull for me, a big draw to become a comedian was just this notion of wanting to do something different all the time, different from the norm, different from the people I knew at school who were all going to grow up to be executives of one sort or another.

2:35You know, I just wanted to kind of rebel against all of that and do something weird and different. So the financial aspect of it and the uncertainty therein was part and parcel of that. It was just like oh that's that's the territory i quite like that it's kind of a thrill do you mean you've got to go out and earn your money i remember there's a street performer called marvin who i haven't thought about in decades who when we first arrived in london in covent garden he was working trafalgar square which is a tough uh piccadilly circus tough pitch lots of break dancers trying to blow you out with their amps you know there's nine of them there's one of you so really tough pitch i never worked here but i remember this guy marvin going you just got to think to yourself i'm not coming off you know what I mean so you need real resilience and I think I don't know if this was him or someone else said they've got it you've just got to think you're going out and you're like I don't know if I can get a show off here you've got to think to yourself all these people are walking around with my money in their pockets which isn't that's not really a very silly you know frivolous kind of a show but you do the amount of kind of uh failure you need to be happy with like that's the whole job street performing and stand-up the job is just go out and fail and fail and fail better all the time so the risk is the the job and the life and everything how does it work practically in all those spots like i was thinking about this the other day like in covent garden for example do you have you've got to pay for pictures and stuff no no no no you never no don't don't pay to play no you're licensed you're licensed by whoever the people who own covent garden market i think it's changed hands since i was there um but people would get there in the morning and do a lottery and pull names out of a hat i really yeah to determine who gets was it like that when you were doing it as well.

4:10Yes, obviously we still like that. And you don't let the magicians have anything to do with it. If anyone's like, we'll flip a coin. We're like, you flip that coin onto the ground and we'll all look at it. There's just too many ways to rig something. But what about like, say you've got like bills or you've got something due that you need to pay and then you're like, okay, we'll go make that money this week and then the whole week it just is pissing down with rain. Yeah, that absolutely happens. Do you still go ahead or? Yeah, sometimes there are some comics, a dear friend of mine, a big inspiration to me is a guy called Pete Dobbing who does one of, he's just a roadblock street show he just they call him golden balls he just cleans up but he he uh it's really original inventive fun stuff and he's clocked that actually if you get your head around it if you go like at the edinburgh festival that's where i started street performing really was kind of regularly doing shows up there and it rains a lot up there and it's that month is kind of the golden month it's like the olympics of street performing huge crowds huge opportunity to make money so he he's got it into his head and i don't think anyone else does this he's got oh it's a rainy day that means no one else will be working so I'm going to do rain shows all day so I'll wear my rain show costume I'll accept I'm going to get wet I'll routine I'll do all of the little faffs that get in the way that you go oh I'm not going out to do another rainy day just my luck he's just overcome all of that and he's just got mindset get out there do the rain shows and suddenly he'll do five shows because no one else is working I hope I haven't given away his secret I think any street before he's watching this show and a show of this nature deserve to know that secret and to benefit from the extremely micro kind of mindsets available within street.

5:43But the other key thing about street performing is we were crowdfunding before there was a word for it. So we were learning how to ask people for money, how to do something good, promise something better, and look them in the eye and shine with pride. And you can see all the people who would kind of be like, oh, if you can put some money in the hat, no one's going to pay them. You have to look at them and go, this is my job. I love this. This is better than all other jobs. And your opportunity to pay for it is, do you know what I mean? Like this is the most honest form of - Yeah, you're almost like asking for money without specifically saying, oh, give me your money.

6:15Yeah. Almost like you didn't need it in a way. You felt like, oh, kind of - Well, I mean, there's different tactics. Don't get the magicians out again. No, exactly, exactly. But I think I always used to tell when, so I'm sure we'll talk about the Edinburgh Festival and stand up and what have you, but there's a thing that's probably been going maybe 15 years now called the free fringe because the edinburgh festival's ruinous for stand-up comedians you regularly when i started it was just accepted you had to lose seven grand you just you sell out your show every day and you come down you look at the settlement and you lost seven grand because all of the accommodation and the cost and the promo the pr everything else so as a rebellion against that um they established some people established a uh fringe called the free fringe where you go and do effectively indoor busking shows in venues so in pubs rather so the upstairs room of a pub they're pleased because they've got footfall all day because of the thing it was put together originally conceived by a sort of benevolent madman called peter buckley hill who who kind of said let's do it this way instead and the the speeches they call them bucket speeches which is a street performer i can't bear because to me it's a bottling speech you've got to have a bit of class it's called the bottling speech but they're just like there's the bucket i i used to when i've done them i collect in like a silver champagne bucket right which is good programming You don't feel good putting a tenner into a bucket, but a champagne bucket.

7:33So I think between me and Pete, we revolutionized the way that stand-up comedians ask for money at the end of their free friend shows. And the advice I always gave everyone was don't apologize for it. Look them in the eye. Shine with pride. Because that's, you know what I mean? You're just, you're saying, look, I deserve to be paid. This is brilliant. But what's wonderful about it, and you can look them in the eye and tell them this honestly, this is for everyone. Poor people get to enjoy this. and if you're rich and you can afford it you're paying to cover the people who can't yeah you want to give me money now don't you yeah when Pete walks in the pub we'll just get fivers out of it just take it just take it did you say Apple Pay or what did what do your parents think about you do street performing they were confused but not unsupportive I would say my dad loved it when I became a comedian because finally he could explain what that was yeah do you know what I mean he'd go my son's a comedian people get oh really yeah but as a street performer what is that one like a human statue yeah no um but yeah they were they were i i don't know if they were i guess they were supportive they didn't get in the way and i think they both accepted that i was going to go and do my own thing yeah no matter what did you need support from day one like financially or were you kind of in a position where you didn't was that's a good question i imagine like some of the time when i was working in manchester with noel i was staying at my mum's I was only like 19 or 20.

8:54So I'd be staying at my mum's and then go up to Manchester at the weekends. And as long as you made enough money to cover the travel to drive up, I can't really remember, you didn't need to make a lot to survive. It was like being a sort of gigging, wannabe musician in your early 20s. So a lot of the risk was taken at a time when I could afford to take the risk because my overheads were next to nothing. And all we needed to do, by the time I then moved in with Noel, all we needed to do was make the rent. and if you had five or six shows over the weekend, you could make the rent, you could buy your food for the week and you'd be sat there going, we could just do anything Monday to Friday.

9:28And of course, the internet didn't really exist so we didn't all start podcasts and YouTube shows. Do you know what I mean? All of the extraordinary kind of entrepreneurialism that the internet has brought us, I suppose in some way, I was turned on by street performing. That lit up the same dials in my head as all of that stuff does now. The ability to go, I'm going to be master of my own destiny. I'm going to bend the world to my will. Yeah. You know, no one becomes a street performer that hasn't, and the same with comedian. No one does that job without seeing someone else and thinking, I bet I could do that.

10:02Yeah. So it's naturally an entrepreneurial. Did you have a memory of that, seeing a street performer or? Unusually, me and Noel actually invented street shows for ourselves before we saw any professional. Right. We saw someone walking on broken glass. It was like an old carny trick. I won't go into details. Don't try this at home. but we clocked it and went I think I know how he's doing it so we were 16 and we just went home and tried it and thank God we were right so we didn't lacerate us how was it? I'm not going to give a take I'll tell you off air you'll tell us off air okay cool cool I can't even imagine that

10:36Stuart Goldsmith:this ad's brought to you by Hiscox so I'm not hosting the episode because unfortunately I can't and this all really started with something that I was really excited about this year I made myself a promise to go on more holidays as I tend to just overwork. So last month I went to Bali with some mates. On the flight I was buzzing, 10 days in the sun, but then life happened. On day three I had a crash with a car. I'll save you the details but my arms were flapping around in a way that you really don't want them to. Fast forward to today and I've had two sets of surgeries on my broken arms. Looking after myself has been a bit of a nightmare and I can't really work that much.

11:13Stuart Goldsmith:It turns out you kind of need your arms. It's the best reminder I've ever had of why the right business insurance is important, so I'm really happy that this episode is sponsored by Hiscox. They can protect you and your business for things like personal accident, which covers you in case an accident means you're unable to work. Plus it can help cover medical expenses and physiotherapy to help with recovery. They also do professional indemnity, employer's liability, public liability, business contents. They can cover your business for a lot of things that can go wrong. I couldn't make it to the last podcast recording, but it could have been even worse.

11:44Stuart Goldsmith:If you're running a small business, then don't leave it until it's too late. Check out Hiscox and get properly covered. They're flexible and they're reasonable. There's a QR code on screen for you if you want to check that out, or there's a link in the description. Protection is subject to already holding a relevant Hiscox policy and to policy eligibility terms and conditions. I mean, based on that and being a street performer, do you enjoy risk generally? I think I do, yes. I love, I think during the pandemic, my feelings about this coalesce. Like stand-up is risk, right? And what you're risking is your dignity.

12:18So every stand-up comic has had a firefighter tell you that you're brave. And you're like, are you mad? But you are prepared to put something on the line that most people aren't, which is your dignity, which is almost as precious as your physical health, you know, and your safety and your well-being. So there is risk because no matter when you start, you might stand. And this is common. So I've interviewed over 500 comics for my own podcast, The Comedian's Comedian, which is like a not funny comedy podcast where I delve into people's creative process and stuff like that. And very many of them have said, I did one gig.

12:51I couldn't believe I'd made myself do it. And I got lucky and smashed it. And then I did another one and I smashed it. And I was like, this is going to be easy. And then gig number three, I bombed so hard. But the proof of concept existed. You've done it once or twice. I think there must be a lot of people who tried it once, bombed. and if they'd just tried it again it could have gone better and then it'd gone oh now I've got the proof of concept so the risk is just it's like it's written through it like a stick of rock it just it is the it's the whole job is to go there and be prepared to maybe you'll kill tonight maybe you'll do fine which is almost worse than bombing do you know what I mean like if they're angry or they heckle or you just stink the place out that has a certain kind of bear wallowing in the mud quality to it but if you just do fine you're like oh god what's the point of this yeah so there's all these different sorts of emotional and sensual and kind of mental experiences that you have to go through to get yourself into it but once you've had a few of those the first time you you know the first gig that works the first time you you're writing jokes during the day and you think that'll work and you've realized that you just know that that'll work yeah and then you do and it does and you go well that's that's the same feeling chris rock hats yeah i might be doing it for less money and to smaller rooms but the the sensual the feeling of it that's the same thing as george carlin had yeah yeah was that like um in terms of your experience with street performing as well so like the first time you ever did it did it go well or was that a bit of a bomb it went well enough it went well enough but because i'd already been through the process with street performing of going uh i'm rubbish at this but i show promise and i want to learn and i'm having good help and good advice and i've kind of been taken under the wing of some really good people.

14:31I could kind of suss out this person is a genius and they're prepared to give me some advice. And then I ended up being, if not a headliner, I was like, you know, I did well in some street performing competitions. I knew, you know, what's lovely about it is you inescapably can do the job. No one can really tell you that you can't do the job. You're like, well, I've done that. I've made this happen out of... I think I still hold the record for the earliest street show that anyone ever got off on a Sunday morning at Coffey Garden. I did the 9.40 a.m. Right. I literally just tore a show out of nothing and put it together.

15:02Very, very satisfying. So because I had already been through, I'm rubbish, I'm willing to learn, I'm better, now I'm pretty good. I'd been through that once with Street. So when I started doing stand-up, I remember me and two other comics who were all very new. And we just had tough gigs and we were having a beer in Soho somewhere. And they were like, God, it's just, is it going to work? And I'm like, guys, what are you talking about? Of course it's going to work. you just keep turning up like what are you talking about you just keep turning up you just it's going to be fine yeah and they both went on to better things than me right it's it's so interesting it sounds obviously oh my god you must have you're going from extremes to be like having like amazing days and terrible days but well speaking to you now it sounds like all the days were great but what were they oh no but i mean what what do you remember of the bad days for example of like stand-up well i guess more for the street performance as well i think i feel it feels that's even harder you know it's differently hard if you suck they leave but in stand-up if you suck they stay and both of those are bad for different reasons yeah when i started doing stand-up very very few people were doing both and now there's loads i mean um the boy with tape on his face or tape face as he's called now he was a street performer at covent garden same time as me now his own vegas residency you know there are loads of people who've done who've kind of switched between both Asher Trelevin, he's a wonderful guy, he lives in, he's in the States now as well.

16:27Loads and loads of people doing really interesting work in both sort of fields. So what did strike me as funny was when I started doing stand-up, a lot of the street performers were like, whoa, are you going to do stand-up? And when I, you know, a lot of the stand-ups are like, whoa, you do street. And I'm like, it's just the same. I mean, it's not that, it's not that different. So I had the first ever, the first ever stand-up gig was it went well enough, but I remember I'll never forget looking down I could see even with like you know eight years of street performing behind me at that point seven or eight years I looked down and I could just see my hands shaking just with adrenaline yeah was that your first one or just that was my first stand up yeah yeah do you still get that feeling when you do stand up now or are you done enough that you don't get that same high good question I mean that's I wouldn't describe that as a high nerves are the enemy of good work some people pay for that the kind of the full body vibration thing No, I mean, I still, I think, and this comes into the work that I do now, I mostly do stand up almost entirely about climate and sustainability and climate crisis stuff.

17:32And I think that is because part of the gear change into that was because stand up for me became slightly diminishing returns. Again, I'm interested in novelty. I want a different sensation all the time. And when you've done really well at a gig and you've got a new bit and it worked really well, I'm bored of it now. I want another new bit and I want another gig at a different place. and I just became a bit frustrated by, I was just, it's a bit of a loop. You know, comics will tell you, they call it the comedy circuit because you go round and round and round and I got a bit bored. At the same time, I had lots of dread about the climate crisis.

18:03So I started talking about that on stage and they both problems kind of interfaced with each other. It helped me process my climate dread and rekindled my excitement. It can't be the easiest thing to make funny climate change. It's an absolute nightmare. Fortunately, I'm excellent. yeah i feel like making like investing sexy like it's just yeah well guys we do our best looks down barrel of camera yeah yeah it is it is it's a really huge challenge but it's also something i'm incredibly passionate about and i really want to talk about it i want to be funny about all of the problems all of the terror that a lot of people are facing and i yeah as soon as i started doing it for i started doing it for sustainability people i do it in like business context i go into all sorts of things whether it's conventions and conferences and and you know partner summits and launches of sustainability strategy yeah and i can make it feel i can make people in the room go oh this is really meaningful rather than a lot of the time they go oh this is like a health and safety briefing yeah that makes sense yeah just going back to obviously everything on street performing and gigging as well we're really interested to dive into the finance of this element like um stuff like how did you actually manage your money and stuff were you living hand to mouth were you saving money investing money again was it always that mentality if I make enough I can just keep going yes that's a good question I think that I was aware that nobody gets rich street performing right and I was young and I was excited about it I was swept up in the romance of the do you know what I mean it's wonderful like romance like sentimentality yeah yeah yeah it's like we walk between the raindrops it's like being on a heist do you know what I mean you're just like you sort of don't exist and you know so in terms of what I was doing I was I was I'm just thinking the timeline i guess i became an actor whilst i was a street performer as well and something i remember from that was i set up a direct debit so that my wages i'm all i'm very cautious my wages would from my acting job i did a long job in the theater by the lake in keswick for nine months huge season and almost no one does those anymore and i set up a direct debit so it would bounce the proportion of my wages that was an estimated tax figure yeah into a separate account and then And whatever was left in my bank, I could spend.

20:15Because I never want to be caught out. I'm very hazard averse, you know. You're very hazard averse, but you like a lot of risk. I suppose they go together. Because if you're going to live a risky life, then you've got to lock down the finances. So you've got to make sure you don't end up... Stuart Lee said this, or he was quoting someone else. He said, someone said, what's your ambition? And he said, not to die alone in rented accommodation. Oh, God. And that's so true for all comedians. But what happened was, I wrote down a zero. it was with I had a little savings account with the Bradford and Bingley and I wrote down an O as a zero or the other way around so it bounced every single time back into my account I didn't notice and I spent all the money so at the end of nine months I was like well that's my tax but where's my tax where's my tax money and I'd spent it all so I was like so then I'm even more risk averse I'm like I tried to build a system to protect myself and it all blew up it's like speaking to other communities is that common in terms of you feel like you're in like a risky industry but your finances is a you think more cautious or are they all think that's a good question i don't i don't tend to talk about money no i think that you talk about the wages the wages in comedy have stagnated since the 80s yeah and the the supply has massively gone up and the demand is the same yeah so loads loads more comedians so you know gigs that paid 200 quid on a saturday night in the 90s probably still pay 200 quid on a saturday night and that goes you know inflation's gone but no one sits there we talk about the wages and we grumble about who pays late and stuff like that um but in terms of like savings and investment i do because i like sharing knowledge like i really like through the podcast and what have you if i've spotted a thing i'll tell people just set up was it josie long i don't even know josie long brilliant comic she said to me years ago she said i don't know why all these comedians go you see people posting on facebook oh my god i've got a huge tax bill don't they understand how the system works yeah you know she says she sees tax as a maths puzzle with a cash prize it's lovely and i'm very much that mentality so i you know i i just the idea of going this money that i've been given isn't mine okay until i've taken away the bits of it that belong to someone else belong to the revenue and the revenue and um and taken away the bits that are going to be on bills and so now i have a and this is a nightmare sustainability wise because one of my big passions is talking to people about putting their money you know where you put your pensions hugely important i've got like 14 bank accounts because i've got adhd an entrepreneurial spirit one or two small revenue streams and they're all geared to like funnel money with direct debits from one thing to another to another to another so that i can't get anything wrong and the system has become completely untenable 14 bank accounts this might be unique I guess if we ever speak to any other comedians, do they run their finances like this?

23:07I don't think they do. You might be unique in that. I think, yes, the combination of sort of enjoyment of systems, panic about doing it wrong, and creating strategies so that I can't mess up. That is a bit of a whirlwind. It's like my financial affairs are like a game of mouse. Yeah. It's funny. I guess that means that if you have your finances like that, it pretty much means that you can just keep going, ultimately. How do you mean? Keep going as in keep gigging. keep you know failing keep trying again and keep doing yes yes except whereas other people would like say oh i've had to go and get a job because i've just run out of money for example yeah yeah yeah and i there have been certain i've got to sort of check my privilege on this there are certain things like when the pandemic hit uh i was i'd been on the road for years and i had a young family and i wanted to be at home when all my gigs went pop i went oh thank god i'm gonna break yeah um and i also because i had the podcast it has a small amount of income but it was enough to go okay well there's not nothing happening anymore and because of the podcast this is what i mentioned before i think in the pandemic i re-framed my view of myself previously i was former street performer now comedian and podcaster and then i went oh everything is like a an open playing field you can ring anyone and get them you can ask them for any favor all of the there's no gatekeepers i mean we're in a sort of post gatekeeper world arguably because of um you know social media but i was like day i think with the pandemic i'd heard that spanish flu lasted four years right risk averse i decided to take actions commensurate with the pandemic lasting four years excellent right so day two day one day two um and it's not lockdown day two of the pandemic the bit when the gig started to disappear and all dry up i got in the facebook group of my podcast and i said there's this thing called zoom i'm going to do a gig on it tomorrow does anyone want to pile in and we'll see if we can break it we'll see what makes it work and that you know we'll find out how to do a gig on it yeah so i was a phenomenally early adopter to that i started then doing a sort of collaborative chat show using zoom and obs and putting it on twitch and then that went really well i picked up loads of fans from doing that so i started to think of myself as a i don't say this to comedians but i started thinking of myself as like a comedy flavored entrepreneur yeah because all of my in Covent Garden the difference between whether you stand on a box or not might make the difference of paying your rent or not so there are really dumb things that you're like if you know on a when are the matinees on a Saturday or on a Wednesday or Thursday I can't remember it's been a long time but people will time their shows so that when the Lion King kicks out around the corner they're just at the right point in the show where they've got a line of audience members who are all screaming just at so everyone's oh what's that so you do these little things and they make all the difference they're like the casino thing, the vigorous.

25:52That's how you make sure you win by doing these little kind of moves. So I've always applied that to comedy and less so the podcast because the podcast is sort of a community garden. It's very non-cynical and I like that about it. But I started doing talks to businesses about what comedians can teach you about resilience. So that's me sweating the podcast assets. But it's also authentic because I love talking about it and all these examples of how comics cope with stuff. So I had that. So then I went, I started doing my online Zoom chat show and I started doing the resilience things via Zoom and I started using LinkedIn and I started hustling.

26:31Almost no comedians are on LinkedIn. I almost want you to edit this bit out. Yeah, don't tell anyone. It's a totally underused resource. And if you can be funny, I'm the only comic I know who actively hustles for corporate work on LinkedIn. Because now I do climate corporate. Yeah. It's corporate for the good guys. I genuinely want to help. I'm super passionate about the subject. And I found a way to do corporate gigs about a thing I really care about. It's life-changing. That's really interesting. Yeah, I've not thought about that myself. Maybe we should be hosting on LinkedIn as well. Honestly, start pimping out on LinkedIn.

27:07I was thinking, I think I already know the answer to this, but was there ever a time that you thought about getting a stable job or salary? Because it seems like even in lockdown, you're like, oh, I can spin off and do this. Have you always been like, I'm not going back? I can honestly say, it's never occurred to me that it's never occurred to me. I've never, no one's ever asked me that. Would you ever get a real job? It's literally never, I've never had a real job. I mean, is it still a real job? I mean, like a salary, like, yeah, I've never had a salary. I've never had a salary. In your whole life?

27:31No, no, no. Because as soon as you've been a street, I just started doing street shows, age 16, me on the bus with the money. I don't ever have to need a boss. I don't ever have to have a pay packet. This is, this is it. Do you remember, remember being like, this is me for my life?

27:49This was at a time, I don't know how old you guys are, but at the time at my college, they were all like, you need your record of achievement. You've got to get your record of achievement. It's like, I think the American equivalent is, this will go down on your permanent record. It's a trick. It doesn't exist. It's absolute nonsense. It's like being told off. My son's like, I got told off. What does that mean? Nothing. So I was resisting. I don't know what to put in a record of achievement. I'm being compressed into this thing. I don't know. And I never filled in my record of achievement and I never had a regular job.

28:20Yeah, so no, it's honestly never occurred to me. Even with the family? Well, by the time I had the family quite late and by the time I had a family, the career was up and running. And I think actually, that might be interesting, I've realised in, so a few years ago I had an ADHD coach. So I got some sessions as part of the government's access to work thing. If you have ADHD, you can get a coach who sort of talks to you about business things and how you can be a bit more together. And one of the things he helped me realize is the order in which I prioritize things. In my mind, it was very sloppily articulated.

28:57It was like, well, I thought I wanted to be famous. Thank God I'm unencumbered by fame. I know lots of people who are famous and some of them like it and some of them don't. And none of them can take it back. I thought I wanted to be famous and I definitely wanted to be creative. And I felt a bit queasy about enjoying making money. but he helped me realize oh i don't want or need to be rich that has no interest for me but what i want is financial resilience i want there to be enough in case something goes wrong and once there's enough in case something goes wrong i don't need what do i need a fancy car i don't i've got no interest in material my clothes are secondhand i you know what i'm interested in is spending time with my family and laughing our heads off that's the only goal so and so the financial resilience is like the main thing and as a result of that i made decisions that i felt funny about at the time that now i can see in that light so i for a while was the studio warm-up guy for itv's loose women oh man that was a funny old job but it paid what to me in those days was a fortune and it was every it was sort of not every day it was like three days a week and when they offered it to me i said i can't accept the whole job because i'll stop being a comedian and just turn into a warm-up man with all due respect to them that isn't what i wanted to do so i split it with a friend and we did half and half i'm so glad we did because i bought a flat in london in 2008 just at the hut just before before just before before my dad rang me and said there's gonna be a massive financial crash go back and offer him 30 grand less and i went i can't do that that's not fair and then bang negative equity for however many years so i took the loose women job and it got me through it got me through but it's not it didn't act it's probably the closest thing i've had to a real job it didn't excite me creatively i wasn't a great fit for it um you know i like i sort of affected a kind of a you know the audience is like 100 blue rinse ladies good luck to them but i affected a sort of i've been thrown to the wolves kind of thing it didn't help me grow which i knew it was the wrong thing but i made it wasn't the right fit let's say but i made the decision because of the financial resilience so that is i mean that's almost we could call that a proper job man I was going to go back just about talk about the finances of like stand-up comedy and also we should move on to the Edinburgh Festival as well we'd be really interested in that but just generally on you know saying like £200 for a night for example or what you got paid break down like the economics because some people think oh I'm paying£50 to go and see a comic at an event how much of that would actually go to you as a performer is there a rough guideline it varies it really does vary so I guess when there's the thing that you don't want to do as a comic is walk into a room where you know you're being paid 250 quid and then you get there and you're like there's 800 people here and they're all on what they're all on this kind of deal but you're not taking any of the risk on the night now I've never been a promoter I've run a PTA gig at my kids school and that's it so I don't like this that would really stress me out the is anyone gonna turn up like that's 99 % of the job you think people who want to run a gig they often go I know loads of comedians this will be easy no knowing comedians is nothing comedians are desperate to work getting bums on seats that's the gig so they take the risk but there is a point to which you're like, someone's taking a mickey here.

32:12But a lot of places, like you gig at a club in London, if they own their premises, like Top Secret. Have you guys been to Top Secret? I've not. Best club in the country. It's absolutely incredible. Up there with hot water in Liverpool and a couple of other people I'll regret not mentioning. But Top Secret is so exciting and diverse. They've just opened one in New York and it's run by a former street performer, a friend of mine, who is just the most tenacious. You should get him on the show because he is completely addicted to making money. He'll be like, this would be a better club if there wasn't a pillar there.

32:44Bang, building room, done. Two days later, pillar's gone. He's just, I'll hook you up. You'd love to chat to me. For sure. I'm sure he'd get a kick out of it as well. So with clubs like that, they own the, he's bought the lease on the building. So their overheads are massive. So I think as a comic, you're sort of on the, one is on the outside of the financials. You just go, they've offered it to me for this I can't really you know the money is the money when you're famous when you're big TV profile they might go there might be a bit more for a profile but if you're not like 95 % of comics in the country then you can't negotiate the money because someone else will do it someone else will probably do it cheaper so you are in a bit of a a bit of a bind plus you want to do the gig I don't know if you've heard Father John Misty on Spotify sessions he did a cover of a track I don't remember the original artist it's called Everything is Free Now I highly recommend you listen to it because it's about how he's realised as an artist, or the writer has realised as an artist, that the money men have realised the artists want to do it.

33:44Got it. And that's how it all starts to fall apart. Interesting. So you have very, very little kind of bargaining power until you're big and then you can start. Interesting. Would you say it's got worse? You mentioned that you feel like there's more supply now than ever. So for those gigs, people are probably saying, oh, just do it for nothing. You know? Yes. that is that is that is just to get the people like not not like the comedy store on a friday night but um but uh i think people are happy to undercut each other we have no union every four or five years someone goes let's have a union it's like herding cats yeah everyone's completely self-interested you know so uh so we have no collective bargaining power which i think's a shame but i understand yeah and when you started out doing it were you one of those people would Like stand up.

34:32Did you have to do it for free, for example? Oh, yeah. Oh, we haven't even talked about that. I once drove from London to Falmouth and back for petrol money in order to do 10 minutes. You have to do so much. That's a long drive. That's a long drive. Five hours or something. Yes. I've done it. It's crazy. So you absolutely have to work for free. You're called an open spot or an open mic. You do gigs for free and you bend over backwards to do gigs for free at the end of the earth because you can't become a comedian without there being an audience there. and if you can't command an audience and who can command an audience when you know one even if you're a YouTuber if you want to do a comedy show tomorrow have you ever dabbled I feel like you've got the confidence oh thank you he's got good taste good eye for talent maybe we can do a little joint joint stand up have you ever done a bit of stand up as YouTubers I'd just be sweating bullets it looks stressful we have a lot of people on the other side of the camera but there's no one in the room so it's very different yes sure well I think YouTubers someone like Max Fosh he started doing stand-up he says uh as a way of um as having a thing to sell he didn't want to do t-shirts he was like why don't i sell tickets yeah but the challenge he has there and he's very very funny but the challenge there is if you've brought the crowd with you they're already on side yeah which is why at clubs like top secret you'll get someone like dave chapelle's played there he's going to come into town do the o2 he'll drop in there and play to an audience that aren't necessarily his fans because that's how you make sure the stuff's funny because your fans are always going to roll over here once you're big so that so i'm getting off the off the track but um pull me back to the original question yeah but basically you started off as you know basically have to do something for free yes you've got a work and then you just have to gradually try and command a bit of interest because you've got a bit of a pull to your name and things well it's more that it's less the american model is that you're i can't remember what they call it it's like you're an mc that means 10 at the top that's kind of it and then you're a feature or something and then you're a headliner and you can only make a living as a comic once you're a headliner right and as a headliner you have to bring the audience with you so a club won't book you to headline until they're sure that your name on the board and your promo will sell x hundred tickets so there are brilliant comics like award-winning comics who would move from london to new york say and they'd be walking dogs and babysitting and doing data entry or whatever during the day so that they could be a comedian whilst they're like i've got to do it all over again yeah in the uk we don't know how lucky we are a lot of people don't realize uh british comics don't realize that people in britain go out to see some comedy so you might go to the comedy cellar in bracknell on a friday night and you can if you're if you're familiar with that club and you're in the kind of catchment area of it you know oh this is a great club they're always great lineups are brilliant so you go and see some comedy now that might be you know a young lady doing one-liners and it might be a transact doing a big political rant and it might be a kind of 50 year old heavy metal comedian bloke you know you don't know you're just there for comedy and so the progression in the uk is completely different to the states you start off as an open mic when you're good they'll pay you 25 quid to do 10 in the middle and then or maybe they'll pay you 50 quid you do the whole middle and then eventually you might be an opener if you're the right vibe i'm nature's opener i'm just you know warm and smiling and friendly everyone relaxes when i walk on you might be a weird awkward kind of an act and get stuck middling until you can headline because no one's going to put you on first but the money goes open mic 10 in the middle full middle set opener closer slash mc often the mc will get paid slightly more than the closer because they can't double up on the night they've got to be there all night but there is there is progression and then or there at least is the illusion of progression because then what happens is you're a headliner yeah and then suddenly someone you opened with yesterday is on mock the week and you're like well hang on a minute and you realize that the progression that you are used to doesn't necessarily scale for the rest of a comedian's career.

38:12I see. Take us also to Edinburgh Festival and how that works. It'll be very interesting. You mentioned about basically sin as a place where you go out and get space to lose money because it's all about promoting yourself. Yes, everyone, every comic will have an experience of looking at the settlement after Edinburgh and you go, all the settlement's back, it's two and a half grand and you're like, okay, that's something. And you're like, no, you owe us. You're like, what? Yeah, because, so, how does it work? Complete basis because I've never been. Yeah, sure. Well, it's the biggest dance festival in the world and it's on your doorstep so you anyone watching this should go it's incredible and if you're frugal as i imagine some of your viewers might be then uh i would recommend going on the first weekend everyone's doing freebies two for one shows previews discounted price the first long weekend is that's really really fun and then we have what's called black wednesday when the all the deals run out and suddenly you realize how big your crowd really is when they've got to pay full price and suddenly there's half as many of them there um so uh how it works is there are a bunch of venues up there there are sort of loosely there's called the big four the pleasants the underbelly the assembly and the gilded balloon they've sort of got a bit of a headlock on it but then the free fringe has slightly upset the apple cart on that one and there's other smaller organizations and what they will do is kind of sell you a venue on a split so they might go this is the cost of the venue you're on a 70 30 split against the guarantee once you've earned x thousand pounds for the room then after that it's a 70 30 split so they make sure they're covered because they're the promoters and you then go what what are the other costs okay so you've got to get up there you've got to live up there and when i started rent was crazy and now it's insane yeah it's insane i don't know this is a crucial element sort of a sidebar the comedy industry is inherently classist and you need to work for free and make mistakes and if you aren't able to stop at your mum's house or get loaned daddy's flat in yeah you know whatever in dulwich you know whatever it is there are enormous advantages to being able to take risks and fail because that's how you get good and people who don't have those advantages aren't able to fail because they have to get invited back and that means there's much less of a profusion of sort of glorious different types of talent you've got to you've got to play a much safer game if you You don't have those opportunities.

40:27It's still possible. Judy Love, I think, was a mother of three when she started. I think she was a single mum of three when she started doing comedy. Hats off to her. So you have – there's the venue, and you're going up. You've got to pay for accommodation. So that might be six grand for the month now to do a flat share. Wow. This is crazy. So you might camp out of town, or you might live in Glasgow. What do you mean? Or like get the bus in or what have you. So that's a big challenge. PR, if you're going to employ a PR person to get reviewers into your show, that might cost you two grand plus VAT if you're not registered.

40:58VAT registered, that's quite a lot as well. Might cost more than that these days. Then you've got to get flyers printed, posters printed. You might have to pay for – if you want a billboard, that starts at 240 quid plus VAT. And then if you want a great big billboard, you might be looking at a grand. So all of these things are going – and then the ticket price, if you're doing – so I work at the Monkey Barrel, which is another like an upstart venue which i love and they do a pay what you want model so it's more like busking people can buy a ticket in advance from edfringe.com and you buy a ticket in advance um and that secures you a seat and you can as a comic you can set the artist can set the ticket price which is really good um that secures you a seat or if you think i don't think it'll be full i'll chance it on the day you can turn up and queue outside and get in for free and then put something in the hat or bucket afterwards if you're so inclined did you kind of pioneer this pay what you want model no no no absolutely not i've contributed to how people ask for money i think that is fair to say i've had a i've made a contribution is this far is it far rarer to do a pay what you want model than a no no because more often the and again it's i don't know if it's class related or kind of um certainly income related if you are a sort of fated london exciting act that's best buddies with the soho theater which is brilliant you've got good for you you maybe you got onto a course or got noticed as part of a thing then you might get a maybe a preferential deal or maybe you're investing money and going i'm gonna pay for a producer so that's another cost that might be another 1600 quid to pay for a producer to look after it and do all the negotiation for you um and as a result you are probably losing money you might come out you know i know people who've done three edinburgh's they're 20 grand in debt and they can't leave their management because they owe the money to their management the management paid up front i remember i won't say who but someone got a big uh a big big like um i won't even name the product a big advert and a friend of mine rang them and said oh you must be quids in and they said yes now i can leave management company x because they could pay back the debt they'd accrued so comedy is full of nice people who love comedy and some horrible people who are aware that comedians can be exploited yeah so that you know like any industry it's probably better than most industries but you know you know what do i know about most industries so um so you might end up so what i was going to say was so the free fringe you can do the free fringe it kind of i suppose the brand of this various kind of splinter free fringes as well but i suppose the brand of it is people who can't necessarily afford to spend and lose loads of money in the posh venues but also people who are really artistic and want to do their own thing and a bit more rebellious, a bit less beholden to the system.

43:45And then in the middle is kind of somewhere like the monkey barrel, which is like, we do pay what you want. So it's not free fringe. It's run in a more professional, organized way with its own venues, but you get to make the decisions and they don't rip you off. Got it. You mentioned stand up on climate change earlier. Yeah. Can you tell us some jokes? No, I'm joking. Sure, I can. Everything I'm wearing is secondhand but to get it I had to kill a man bang climate comedy when did you first get into start doing climate change comedy so my first climate comedy show was called spoilers it was in 2023 and it was one of the 50 best reviewed shows at Edinburgh which is a boast when you know there's 3 ,000 shows at Edinburgh but if you don't know that it really doesn't say right top 50 top 50 oh I'm embarrassing but so in 2022 I was doing a work in progress show up there which is the most fun way to do Edinburgh.