Stephen K Amos

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'Was there one moment I decided that I wanted to be a comedian? Absolutely not'
January 29, 2010
JONPAUL HEDGE
thisissouthdevon.co.uk

STEPHEN K Amos is a rule breaker. Well, he mocks the traditional route into comedy. He's a man who wasn't a fan of comedy, didn't watch comedy and wasn't interested in comedy. In fact, it is small mercy for his increasing hoards of fans that he ever developed a sense of humour.

"For me there's no history when it comes to comedy," he said. "I didn't watch comedy on television. My parents weren't big fans. I didn't do comedy clubs. Was there one moment when I decided that I wanted to be a comedian? Absolutely not. I had no interest in comedy. I had always been quite funny or mad or whatever, but was on-course for a normal career.

"I had just finished a law degree and was just about ready to go onto the next stage. One day I was travelling to New York and this woman said: 'Oh my God, you are so funny'. She asked: 'Why don't you do stand-up comedy?' I told her not to be ridiculous and that I might be funny in one-to-one in conversations, but stand-up would be totally different. I went to the Comedy Club in London, originally to watch, and ended up doing a sketch. It was just as simple as that."

Stephen comes from a big family with four brothers and four sisters, one of whom is his twin. When he first decided he wanted to start in comedy he said he initially faced some scepticism from his family. "My family say that they can picture it now," he said. "They say that I was always mucking around, never paying attention. I was never academic in terms of science subjects. I had resistance from my parents. Obviously, when you go down that career people worry. But now that things are working they very proud."

You could forgive his family for being a little concerned over his new career choice. First time out, Stephen didn't practice. Then again, he thought it was just reading out loud. "There was no traditional route for me," he said. "First time I performed I didn't practice. I think that's how I've developed the style that I have. I presumed that what people did was go up on stage with a piece of paper and read out jokes. And that's what I did, to the joint hilarity and absolute disgust of the audience. I obviously now realise that a lot more work is involved."

Stephen was speaking to me from a hotel room in Aberdeen, currently on a national tour. The show, which will come to Torquay's Babbacombe Theatre next week, is a break from the likes of Have I Got News for You, Mock the Week, Live at the Apollo, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle and The One Show. The television exposure now means he is recognised more.

"I don't mind that," he said. "Particularly if they are nice people. The show isn't rocket science. I always say to people that if you don't like what I do, then don't come and see it. But nine times out of 10, people have had a laugh and just want to come and express that."

Stephen says the more comedy he did, the better he got until he reached a consistent level of performance. "Thankfully, I didn't have to work at working men's clubs but once I was on the 'comedy train' I've worked hard at it," he said. "That said, I didn't think that one day I would be doing my own national tour or that I'd have my own series on television. What happened to me is that I just started to get very consistent, I wasn't having up and down gigs. I learnt how to work my audience, I leant how to sell my material and make a personality work. I can't pinpoint a time where I thought that I had cracked it, it has been more a case of just being consistently better."

His new show The Feelgood Factor comes fresh from a triumphant run at the Edinburgh Festival, where he played to 16,740 rapturous fans. The 70-date tour will culminate at the Hammersmith Apollo in London.

"I'm trying not to dwell on all the negatives that have happened recently – the financial crisis, the MPs' expenses scandal, the fact that no-one has faith in the Government anymore. I talk about all the little things in life that make you feel good. Audiences are crying out for something like this. Shows like the X Factor are getting massive audiences. People want escapism, and people want a laugh. For instance, I'll be remembering the joy I experienced as an eight-year-old boy running downstairs to beat my brothers to the toy hidden at the bottom of the cereal packet. It was always a bike reflector. I didn't have a bike, but I was still determined to get there first. If you remind people of something like that from your childhood, they all go: 'That happened to me, too'. That creates a very warm feeling."

Stephen added: "I went round to my brother's the other day and his five-year-old son was laughing uncontrollably. I asked him why he was laughing, and through tears, he replied, 'I don't know.' Then I started laughing uncontrollably, too. At that point, my brother came in and asked: 'What's going on'? At first, he didn't get it. My question is: What happens to that wonderful sense of childhood innocence when we grow up?"

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Stephen K Amos: 'I don't want to be labelled "the black gay comic"'
The standup talks about coming out, the shortage of black performers on TV and why he's playing his mum
Stephanie Merritt
The Observer,
31 October 2010

You've just made your first television comedy show for the BBC. What can viewers expect?
The Stephen K Amos Show is very gentle, nothing too shouty. I bring the audience into a surreal world, where I also play my mum, who's a recurring character, and we have guests and a great team of comics who also appear. My mum is the one who dares to say the things I wouldn't say as myself.

You've enjoyed a successful career on the live circuit for 18 years – why has it taken so long to break into television?
About 10 years ago, I had a meeting with an executive who said to me: "You know what, you're really funny, you're ready to make a show right now. But it's them –" and he pointed out of the window "– they're not ready for you." And I just thought: "What? You've called me into your office to tell me that they're not ready when you have the power to say let's give this a go?" Another producer once said to me: "We really like you but we've just had Richard Blackwood." As if it's one in, one out.

I used to do a joke where I said I'd have to wait for Lenny Henry to die before I could get on television. But I can't think of a time when there were two black performers on any network at the same time. I know lots of comics who've left the country and are trying their hand in America because they feel they're hitting a glass ceiling here.

In 2006, your comedy style changed when you did an Edinburgh show in which you spoke publicly for the first time about being gay. Why then?
Two reasons. I'd proved to myself over the years that I could make a room laugh by not saying anything in particular and I'd been thinking for a while, what's the next step? Because standup comedy is the one job where you can get up in front of strangers and say anything you like, so you've got room to change perceptions or make people think about something. And then I heard on the telly they'd found a body on Clapham Common, someone who'd been killed in a homophobic attack, and saw the picture and it was a friend of mine. To think there are people willing to kill someone they don't even know, based on their perceived sex life, I thought, how can I respond to this?

What kind of response did you get?
When I mentioned it in the show, you could hear gasps from the audience. There was even one night when I heard a woman say: "Oh no!" It wasn't that I was hiding it before, I just didn't talk about it in my comedy. But the response from that show is probably the most rewarding I've had. This lad came up to me after one show, a white kid, about 19, very street savvy, and said: "I've been struggling with these issues but I'm going to tell my mum that I'm gay today." For me, that was enough reason to do the show.

Did you find yourself becoming a kind of role model as a result?
It became a responsibility. Maybe I was naive but I didn't expect the weight of that. I've been asked to go on all sorts of programmes to discuss those issues and I've just picked a few, because I don't want to be labelled as "the black gay comic". I didn't set out to be this role model, but if it's all in moderation and if you can inspire and encourage younger people, then that's a great thing.

You made a documentary, Batty Man, for Channel 4 about homophobia in the black community. Why was that important to you?
I wanted to look at those issues from my own perspective, because growing up in south London as one of a few black kids in my class, the one thing you could hide easily was your sexuality, even if you couldn't hide your blackness. So I wanted to explore the negative attitudes in my community. I knew people who were leading double lives. You think, how can you be at peace with yourself when you're leading what to me feels like a horrible existence? You're projecting this image of happy families and yet every other Friday you're out to a club and your wife and kids have no idea. I wanted to find out if in 21st-century Britain young people have more positive ideas.

And did you see any signs that attitudes are changing for that generation?
Since making that programme, I have black youth coming up to me and saying: "I saw that documentary, that was really good, man, an eye-opener." It's been the hardest and the most honest piece of work I've ever done but it's out there. I left the country when it came out because I didn't know how it would go down. But if no one is honest and visible then nobody can move forward at all.

Who were your role models when you were growing up?
I never went to comedy clubs when I was younger so I didn't have comedy role models as such. For me, it was my dad. I know how he and my mum struggled when they arrived in this country from Nigeria in the 1960s, the stuff they went through. We never saw them that much as kids because my dad was working three jobs to keep things running smoothly. My dad's nickname when he was younger was Smiler, so I think that's where I get that from.

Does comedy need to address "issues"?
I don't think it has to be cathartic. But when I started out in the clubs, my idea of comedy was going: "Look at me, I'm funny, jazz hands!" and it was just showing off. Once I started revealing something or talking about a race issue, where in one sentence people can laugh and then go: "Ohhh", I found people responded to that. I never thought people would be interested in my life, but when I used to do jokes about my parents arriving in London and seeing signs saying: "No blacks, Irish, dogs", people didn't know that was true. It would have been easy never to mention anything about sexuality and fend off the questions and just be jolly old Steve, but what's the point? No, if I can do something that empowers me in the process, that can only make you grow as a human being. Oh, listen to me, I've gone all Oprah.

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Stephen K Amos on why he’s looking on the bright side of life
Catherine Jones,
Liverpool Echo
Jan 7 2011

JUST like Eric Idle’s miscreant on the cross in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, Stephen K Amos would like us all to look on the bright side of life. And to underline his rallying cry in these dark days of January he’s embarking on a national tour (The Best Medicine) to spread a little happiness around the UK – alighting at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall next month.

“I’m really a genuinely positive kind of person so I don’t want to think about doom and gloom, just the funny things in life,” he points out. “Whatever you’re going through at that moment, it could be harsh, it could be sad, it could be distressing, but if you look back on it, we all laugh. I’ve had situations in my life that at that moment were absolutely awful, and I look back at how I was then, and I will find something to laugh about.”

As an adult with adult responsibilities, it’s tricky sometimes to see through what life throws at you. So it’s no surprise the 43-year-old turned to the next generation for inspiration when it came to the theme of his latest tour. He smiles: “I saw my two nephews, who are five and six, and just the joy and the innocence in their eyes was so uplifting. When did we lose that?”

The Best Medicine follows last year’s The Feelgood Factor (there’s an obvious theme developing) which also saw the London-born comedian take to the Philharmonic Hall stage. “The audience were just willing me to do well, and thankfully I met them half way and we had a good old night,” he recalls. “I’ve played Liverpool quite a few times and I think the people are just amazing. Everyone, as I’m sure you’ve heard before, is a comic, so you have got a really hard task there – you have to deliver because they won’t let you off. But once you nail them, and they like you, it’s one of the best gigs in the country.”

Until he was in his early 20s however, Stephen himself had never set foot in a comedy club. In fact, he was studying for a law degree and heading for a steady career in the legal world when the hand of fate intervened. “I totally fell into it,” he says. “I went travelling, then I met a woman, an American, who said I was very funny, and why didn’t I do comedy? I said don’t be ridiculous! And she came back to London, opened a comedy club and asked me to come and work for her. It was a massive career leap, but I was glad she could see something that I didn’t see. I’d been the class clown, but I didn’t ever think of making a career out of being silly.”

That was almost 20 years ago, and Stephen, who made his debut at Edinburgh in 2001, has been a regular on the comedy scene ever since. But it’s really only been in the last three years that he has become a household name, largely due to three high-profile TV appearances being screened, fortuitously, within a month of each other. One of them was the Royal Variety Performance filmed at the Liverpool Empire in December 2007 in front of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. Stephen says: “I did the Royal Variety, Have I Got News For You, and Live at the Apollo, and it all came out within a month and then suddenly I was everywhere and people were going, ‘who is this guy?’ People hadn’t known then that I’d been doing it for about 15 years already.”

Since then his career has gone from strength to strength, including fronting his own show on BBC2, and a hilarious appearance on Children in Need Mastermind answering questions on the band Five Star as well as regular appearances on Mock the Week. He’s also tried his hand at acting, with a West End run in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest which he describes as “the best six months of my life”.

But comedy remains his first love: “It’s the one job where I can do what I like. There are no constraints on me and audiences either like it or they don’t. I can’t think of any other job that’s so rewarding.”

Stephen K Amos brings his The Best Medicine tour to the Philharmonic Hall on February 22. He is also at Warrington’s Pyramid and Parr Hall on January 23.