Inspired by The Simpsons and Goodness Gracious Me, his career in comedy beckoned against a backdrop of turbulence
If you met me at 16, you’d be able to pretty quickly work out what I’d be like at 38. I had started being involved in the school debating society. James Acaster says I should always tell people that a lot of what I did back then was make funny debating speeches, which is the DNA coding of what I would go on to do as a comedian. I don’t think he means that as a compliment. He says it explains everything and then refuses to elaborate.
I had just come through a period of constant detention. Just for answering back and being a piece of shit. I have nothing but sympathy for people who taught me in the first five years of secondary school. Once I started A levels, I loved it. I had a much better time. I always had a really good group of people around me and a good group of mates. I was lucky in that regard.
I was deeply into music. I was a 16-year-old with the taste in music of someone three decades older than me – Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Velvet Underground, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone. I was also obsessed with The Simpsons. I saw an interview with [show writer] Mike Scully who said that the message of the show, apart from the importance of family, is that your teachers, political leaders and religious leaders may not have your best interests at heart. That made a very strong impression on me. The spirit of the ’60s counterculture really ran through The Simpsons and delivered it to Generation X and old millennials like me second-hand. And if you’re listening to The Times They Are a-Changin’, if you’re fixated on the idea of Hendrix playing The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock, and you have all this paranoia and suspicion... then, when a government who you feel positively towards goes and embarks on a war with very little evidence? All that is going to do is validate your suspicions about institutions, and power and powerful people.
At 16, I was consumed by shame, like a lot of teenagers are. I’d like to tell my younger self, relax, buddy, just relax. There’s no reason for you to be this embarrassed all the time. Just go out and live your life a little bit more; enjoy being young more. You don’t have to take all this that seriously.
I was a huge Goodness Gracious Mefan. Seeing them live brought about a seismic shift in my understanding of who was able to do comedy. But I still had no sense of what a career in com
