IT might have been his own dad who got Daniel Sloss interested in comedy but he counts Ed Byrne, Frankie Boyle and Conan O’Brien as his stand-up father figures.
Byrne was the first comic Sloss went to see perform live, Boyle gave him a helping hand as he was starting out and the young Scot has been seen by millions in the US after being asked to do a few routines on the popular late-night talk show Conan.
“Conan took me under his wing and he kept having me back on the show. He’s been great,” says Sloss (24).
Frankie Boyle is said to have got word of Sloss’s comic talents after the latter’s mother met Boyle at a corporate gig and told him all about her son. Sloss then ended up writing material for Boyle on the satirical TV show Mock the Week, before launching his own stand-up career aged just 16.
“Frankie gave me my first break and helped to get me into stand-up comedy. I haven’t spoken to him in a while now, though. We’re on two very different circuits, so we don’t really bump into each other.”
Sloss has just finished his seventh run at the Edinburgh Fringe and takes his new show – Dark – to Belfast on September 24 and to Dublin in November.
“I love coming over to Ireland. The audiences are always very fun, loud and boisterous. I’ve done the Black Box in Belfast a few times and I’ve got a lot of friends in Dublin,” he says.
So what are the big topics in his new show?
“It’s just me talking about my life. The topics that I cover are God, tampons, sex and death.”
Sloss was born in England but moved with his family to Scotland when he was four and now lives in Edinburgh. While he first took to a stage in Edinburgh aged 16, at The Laughing Horse, he argues that it wasn’t his official stand-up debut.
“I don’t count that. My dad argues that that was my first gig, but I don’t agree. If you ask any of the 20 audience members what I did that time, it wasn’t comedy. So I say my first gig was when I was 17.”
He says he was happy with his Edinburgh run last month. “It went great. It’s always a good time in Edinburgh, even when you do have a hangover – a never-ending thing during the festival. I got people [in the audience] from the ages of 14 to 75, which is nice. I didn’t think it would be that broad.”
Sloss says he’s not one to read reviews. “It’s very easy to avoid reading reviews, considering I don’t get them. A few years ago I decided to stop giving free tickets to reviewers. Suddenly when you stop offering them free tickets, none of them show up,” he says.
“I’ve only had one or two reviews in the past few years. It’s very hard to respect the opinion of one person when every single audience member is laughing. I will read reviews of friends of mine and then note down the name of journalists who gave them s****y reviews, just so I remember them.”
So will he be granting review tickets for his Belfast and Dublin gigs? “It’s different when I’m on tour. People who review tours and stuff probably do it for the rest of the year, but about 95 per cent of the reviewers in Edinburgh in August are not reviewing comedy the rest of the year.”
Sloss has popped up on TV over the years, on the likes of Sunday Night at the Palladium and Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, while his appearances on Conan O’Brien’s show have led to him pitching pilot TV shows in the US.
“I’m doing some stuff out in America, yeah, but nothing’s set in stone. Everything’s all very weird over there. And they don’t like swearing as much as we do.”
He says he’s a fan of Irish comics Andrew Stanley, Chris Kent and Micky Bartlett. And he admits that going to his first comedy gig aged 14 – Ed Byrne – was a big deal for him.
“I actually saw Ed the other night [in Edinburgh]. He’s one of the main reasons I got into stand-up comedy, so it’s very weird hanging out with him.”
:: Daniel Sloss plays the Waterfront Hall studio in Belfast on Thursday September 24 at 8pm, as part of the Belfast Comedy Festival. For tickets (£10/£12.50) call 028 9033 4455 or visit Waterfront.co.uk. He also plays Whelan’s in Dublin on Thursday November 26.
