In three days, Scottish comedy superstar Daniel Sloss will be flying to India for an eight-city tour—the biggest one by an international comedian—produced by DeadAnt’s live events division, DeadAnt Live. This tour is part of ‘The Loop’, a new DeadAnt Live initiative which is the embodiment of our ambition to create space for laughter, provocative comedy, and cultural dialogue throughout India. Currently getting some much-needed family time after shows in Greece and Turkey, the comedian is all set to entertain the somewhat… overenthusiastic fans who sent him threats (his words not ours) after last year’s tour. You can get your tickets here.
Earlier this month, Sloss hopped onto a quick Instagram Live with our founder-and-CEO Ravina Rawal. They chatted about what he’s looking forward to on his return trip to the country, why he went ahead and got married after convincing millions of people love isn’t real, and dropped some nuggets of wisdom for up-and-coming comedians. Here are some key takeaways from the interview! Edited excerpts below:
Are you still tracking how many divorces you’ve caused?
I stopped counting the breakups because it was getting too much. And then we were just doing estimates because I was like, “OK, well, it’s hard gauge now.” The divorces I’m trying to keep on top of. Like every time somebody mentions another one to me, I add it mentally up in my head. And I still do get messages because you know, the Netflix algorithm or the Instagram algorithm will introduce me to someone’s feed. They go on Netflix, watch my back catalogue. So I would say, I do get at least 10 or 12 messages every week, which is somebody saying I broke up with my partner.
Do people feel betrayed that you got married after telling everyone else how shit it was for you?
I mean, some people I think could see hypocrisy in there. I don’t see any f*cking hypocrisy. Me and my wife went back and watched Jigsaw the other day just to like get some f*cking quotes from it to maybe turn clips that we can put on social media and wherever because I can’t watch it by myself because I hate watching myself. And watching it with her, I’m like, “again, I’m right.” At no point in that show, do I say I do not believe in love. In fact, I very specifically tell people that I believe in love and that you can find somebody who you want to spend the rest of your life with. I’m just adamant that most people were wrong and I’m still absolutely adamant that people out there are in the wrong relationship and I’m in the right one and that’s because I’m smarter than people.
Did you have anything specific that you’re really looking forward to in India now that you’ve had a little taste of it and you’re coming back for more?
Yes. I’m excited to see more of it. Because I know people outside of India, when they picture [it], I think they just picture like one place not realising how vast a country is. So I’m very excited to see the different parts of it. I’m very excited to—sensibly and with much curation—try more of the food because it was one of my favourite bits of the last tour.
What’s the most offensive joke you’ve written that hasn’t made it to one of your shows?
Some really, really, really horrible stuff that I’m glad nobody was f*cking filming. I have said some horrific shit in the pursuit of laughter, especially when I was younger. You know, when you’re a young edgy comedian, you’re just being edgy for the sake of being edgy with no intent or desire to make it intelligent or make a new point. You’re just saying something edgy because you’re on stage and it’s a power trip. Which is why whenever comedians do jokes that offend other people, I’m like, “man, that’s the game.”
Sometimes we say really offensive stuff and we’re allowed to get it f*cking wrong. Most of the time, if a comedian says some of the most heinous shit I’ll ever hear, I tend to trust that the intent was always to be good. And I’ll always defend a comedian’s right to f*cking fail. And get it wrong. But if you consistently get it wrong enough times then I’m going to question your intention. That’s when I’ll call you just a f*cking hack. But if I feel it’s genuinely in the pursuit of comedy, I’m willing to forgive a lot of misguided ignorance considering most of my career has been misguided ignorance.
What happened in Spain? You’ve been after them for a long time. (Sloss has been engaged in a social media feud with his Spanish fans)
They’re just not good at comedy. They don’t have a massive scene like in India where standup comedy has existed for what? 30 years? Maybe even longer. Spain has no standups really. And as a people, they hate British people, which is fair because British people are awful. But it means that they treat every British person like a piece of shit. They’re much like Italy, in the sense that their grasp of English isn’t great. So it makes doing shows over there harder. Like, people in Lithuania and Portugal and India and Iceland and Norway, all speak infinitely better English than the average Spanish person. And that really translates when you’re on stage. And I’ve just never had a great time there, on-stage or off-stage. I’m really, really low-key f*cking racist about them.
What’s one thing that you want to see, do or experience in India?
Oh god. What a difficult question. I mean, it’s obviously the food. I want to see the standard stuff that I’ve sort of seen in my head. I really like the architecture of some of the old religious buildings even though, you know, massive atheist here. But I can still appreciate places of worship for what they are and what they represent. So I definitely want to go see a lot of that. The Holi festival would have been great, but I know we’re missing out on that. I’m just excited to learn more about it. I feel ignorant in what I know about India. The great pride that Indians have about their country is something really exciting to learn about. And talk to other comedians out there.
Do you play any instruments?
No, no. I’m deeply untalented when it comes to anything music, which is why my music taste is so appalling and I have some really awful opinions on music that upset people a lot. I could comfortably, for the rest of my life, live without ever hearing a song again. I like music. It’s fine. But I don’t listen to it during the day. But if you were to take music out of my life, I think it would take me over a month to notice. People get so angry at that because I just don’t care.
I make fun of musicians a lot because first of all, I’m a comedian and I’m insecure about anyone that’s got any more talent than me. But I do think the worst trick the devil ever pulled was musicians convincing us that they’re f*cking cool. I don’t know how rappers got away with convincing us. How did people in rock bands convince us that getting in a garage with your virgin friends and writing a song about making your feelings rhyme makes you cool? It’s the lamest thing I have ever heard in my life. You’re allowed to do music but don’t pretend you’re anything other than a slightly more talented poet. There’s something inherently lame about making your feelings rhyme.
Do you have any advice for younger comics?
Get out of my f*cking business. How dare you? No. I think the number one key is to just get on stage as often as you can. The only big secret to getting good is to just do it as often as you can, which is the secret for getting good at most things. The more you do it, the better you’ll become, the more used to it you become. And also I wouldn’t listen to much of my advice. I’m a comedian from a different generation. I’m dog shit at social media. I write one new show every f*cking two years. The game is surpassing me and moving on and changing. And I love watching the younger generation of comedians come through and blow up and do it in their own ways. And there’s so many of them just being better than me. You know, here’s my advice: only listen to 20% of the advice from older comedians.
Any writing tips for someone starting out?
The way I do it is to write out how you think you’re going to do it on stage and then go through it. And every time you think something is a punchline or you think something’s funny, you do a tick and then look at that bit of paper. And if the ticks are too far apart that needs to be tightened. If you want people to listen to your rant, it has to be funny. The only reason I ever became funny is because I’m a ranty f*cking piece of shit. And the only reason people would ever listen to me when I was young was I made sure those rants were funny. So, make sure that you can see that every second sentence at the latest has something that constitutes a punchline or a joke or a good observation that will make the audience laugh.
If you want to check out the entire IG live, here you go!
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