Comedian Stephen K Amos has never courted controversy. But it tends to find him anyway. Now he’s limbering up for a new stand-up tour, Bread and Circuses. William Gadsby Peet meets the man behind the mirth
JAMES PENLIDIS PHOTOGRAPHY
Stephen K Amos is somewhat unimpressed by my first question. My fault, I must admit: prefacing an enquiry with “I will start with a boring question, one I imagine you’ve been asked in every interview” is hardly calculated to stir the soul, and a playful retort duly arrives down the phone before the offending sentence draws to a close.
“Well, if it’s a boring question, why ask it, dear William?”
Fair point. Still, having mollified him with the promise of more adventurous questions to come, I succeed – at the second attempt – in eliciting a response to my prosaic opening gambit. What was it, exactly, that got Mr Amos into comedy?
“I came from a big family, and when you’ve got so many siblings, you have to find your own voice to be heard and noticed,” he explains in his trademark velvet drawl. “But I didn’t think of it as comedy – it was just me, my nature. Then I finished my studies and took a trip to America, and I met a woman out there who happened to be visiting with the friends I was staying with. She said: ‘You’re really funny, you should try comedy.’ It transpired that she was a promoter, so I took her at her word and went for it.”
The habit of stumbling accidently, and often reluctantly, into the limelight has characterised Stephen’s career. In 2006, galvanised by the murder of a friend in a homophobic attack, he worked the fact that he was gay into his set at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and was stunned by the media furore.
“Back then there was no social media as we know it now, so I naively thought that I was just doing a show,” he recalls. “I said something and I was completely caught out by how the media took it as a massive statement. Something had happened to somebody I knew and that made me want to write a show that included being more open and honest with the audience, but it wasn’t a big [Singing] ‘I’m cooooming out’ moment, Diana Ross style.”
Without doubt, having Stephen sing Diana Ross down the phone to me is one of the highlights of my fledgling journalistic career. But I digress.
“I never lied to anyone, I never pretended I had a wife or a girlfriend or anything like that, I was just doing jokes. So when I did this thing in my show and then, for the next couple of years, was constantly asked to do panel shows about gay rights and issues, I did think: ‘Oh my God, now I’m a spokesperson; now I’m a poster boy.’ I really hadn’t seen that coming.”
Solicited or not, the spokesperson role is one at which Stephen excelled, contributing a wealth of witty and articulate insights to discussions on both homosexuality and race. His 2008 documentary, Batty Man, is essential viewing for those unaware of the plight of gay black men and the unbearable levels of homophobia they often face in their communities.
But unsought controversy returned in 2009, when Stephen repeated a comment of Prince Harry’s on morning chat show The Wright Stuff. The Prince, it transpired, had remarked that he “didn’t sound like a black chap” when they met after the stand-up show We Are Not Amused, in which Amos had performed for Prince Charles’s 60th birthday. Does he think that the media blew the exchange out of proportion?
“Absolutely,” he cries vehemently. “I said it on a TV show, adding a comedic spin. But the host of the show said: ‘Oh my god, is that true? That’s going to blow up!’ I didn’t think he’d be right, but the next day all of the national newspapers had picked it up and I had social media messages from people around the world – some accusing me of saying nonsense just to be famous.
“I was left thinking ‘what the hell?’ What I said was a) true and b) comedic. But, of course, the context for the remarks was never published.”
JAMES PENLIDIS PHOTOGRAPHY
What is so acutely ironic about both media frenzies is how ill they represent Stephen K Amos and the flavour of his material as an entertainer. No Frankie Boyle or Jimmy Carr, he doesn’t set out to shock or make an audience uncomfortable. Indeed, the best indication of what motivates his comedy is to be found in his aborted alternative career plans.
“Originally I thought I was going to work in a Citizens Advice Bureau,” he explains, congratulating me en passant on my markedly improved line of questioning. “That was my thing: trying to help people who couldn’t afford the right legal representation, people who were the underdogs. Now, of course, a lot of those Bureaux are closing down. In any case, it’s definitely for the best that I didn’t go down that route, as I don’t think that I could have detached myself enough from someone’s problems and panic and pain.
“What I’ve found in doing comedy, which I didn’t expect at all, is that there are people in the audience who have stories of their own. They may be sad or depressed, or they may have lost their jobs or just got divorced or be struggling with things, but that evening they will laugh and forget about all those troubles. In a weird way, I’m doing the same thing as I would have been doing at a Citizens Advice Bureau, or as a social worker, except that I’m not taking any of the issues home myself.”
So the primary aim of a Stephen K Amos set is to offer an escape for members of the audience?
“Actually it’s twofold. I think comedy is also a way of having somebody stand in front of you and put something to you that you may not agree with while still seeing the funny side of it. We may not agree politically, or have the same point of view, but if we can all laugh at the same things, then comedy has a really great role to play on that level too.
“So it’s not just escapism, though that’s part of it. It’s to do with making people think about things in a different way.”
And Bread and Circuses? What is the inspiration behind the latest tour from comedy’s most effusively charming ringmaster?
“The title is me being quite silly,” he says. “I think back to the old days when bread was all that poor people could afford, and now here we are all these years later and it’s an artisan product. I mean, you can buy sourdough inspired focaccia loaves, or whatever, for more than a fiver. What the hell? It’s extraordinary!
“Also, looking around the world at all the tragedies – all the terrorism, the Brexit situation, the Trump situation etc etc – it’s like a circus, and we’re like the onlookers, the audience.
“What I guarantee about this show is that it’s not going to be a boring, political heavyweight slugfest. It’s just going to be non-stop laughter and within that, hopefully, I’ll be weaving ideas and thoughts that people can take away and think about.”
‘Everything,’ said the poet Juvenal, ‘now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.’ For two nights only, the populace of Maidenhead is about to have its wish fulfilled.
- Bread and Circuses comes to Norden Farm, Maidenhead on January 25 & 26. For tickets visit: norden.farm or call the box office on 01628 788 997
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