Performer: Jez Watts Photograph by: Shaun Ferraloro Show: #1 Comedy Great Fun Best Show Jez Watts Venue: Laughing Horse @ The Free Sisters Wee Room Promoter: Indie Online: Box Office Facebook Website
Tell me about your Edinburgh show.
There’s no theme and there’s no fat. It’s all my best standup since last year, which means great jokes, great punchy stories and bits, and also one live-onstage-created-loop machine song that will sound great and be funny.
Tell me about your first gig.
It went better than it had any right to and made the inevitable second gig’s fall from grace that much more painful.
Do you have any rituals before going on stage?
Panic and assessment of escape routes.
Tell me about your best and worst review.
I got a 4.5 star review this year where the reviewer was on their phone the whole show and several times stood up in the middle of the show to take a picture. I had no idea she was a reviewer and I’m really lucky I didn’t attack her for both of those things, which I really considered doing.
I got BRUTALISED in a 1.5 star review for the same show like a week later where a bunch of old people who were NOT interested in what I was doing sold out the room and had a really terrible time.
During this Edinburgh run, do you plan to read reviews of your show?
Only extremely obsessively and with a huge chip on my shoulder.
How do you feel about reviewers generally?
I don’t care why you come to my show. I’m just glad you’re there.
In April 2018, YouTube comedian, Markus Meechan (aka Count Dankula) was fined £800 for training his girlfriend’s pug dog to do a Nazi salute with its paw, in response to the phrase ‘Gas the Jews’. Do you believe Meechan committed a criminal offence, and why?
Yes, because now he’s a prop comic.
Are there any subjects that are not suitable for comedy?
A bunch of obvious and popular political opinions delivered in a row with no punchlines, ending in an applause break.
Have you ever gone too far?
One of my earliest closing bits when I started comedy was listed on my setlist as “Indian Rape Joke”. So yeah. I think I also used it as an opener a couple of times.
Looking back over your time as a comedian, tell me about the best gig of your career.
I’m hope I’m getting better as I go and the best gig is whatever you, the reader, comes to.