If there's anything to be said in a broad way about different audiences it's that I live in a major city, and those themes of isolation, protectiveness, loneliness tend to resonate with other people in major cities. In a sleepier village, where people are married with their children, me standing up and saying, "This marriage idea is a funny old convention that we invented" - various things that are deconstructions of the norms of a culture - if people have already made decisions like that, they're more inclined to say "Please, stop talking about our marriages, 'cause we're here now."
Simon AmstellI'm not interested in being gratuitously relatable and broadening out what I do in order to reach more people. When I'm going into specific details of the trauma, I think it's the details that connect with people. I'm accidentally relatable - I didn't mean to be, and I didn't think I would be. It feels like what I'm saying on stage is quite shameful and possibly perverted; so for other people to be laughing and go, "Oh, yes, we understand that. We are like that too," is very lovely.
Simon AmstellI can't bear small talk, it's awful. I want to get beyond that thing of discussing how the weather is a bit better today than it was yesterday, and how this is a nice restaurant. I want to get to what are the problems, what's really going on. Are you in love? Are you in a lot of pain? What's really going on in your life? I'm interested in that area, whether it's on stage or in real life.
Simon AmstellAbout once a week I think about going and living in a cave and meditating instead. I think that would be a more peaceful life, where my spiritual journey was not interrupted by egomania so regularly.
Simon AmstellAt first I was very anxious about starting Twitter, because I didn't really know what was expected of me. I now feel fairly relaxed, in that's it a way of telling people things that you are doing, without any attempt to be entertaining. To me, even funny people who are tweeting, it just gives a glib impression. You know that it's been constructed, that it's not a thing that's just happened in that moment. So whatever you read, the best you get is, "Eh."
Simon AmstellI'll just talk and talk for an hour, an hour and half, until funny things come out of my mouth - often things that I don't think will be funny, often things that I just thought were sentences, turn out to be funny, because they're the sentences of an idiot. There's level of self-awareness that develops, and I write down things that were funny, usually when I'm on stage, and that becomes the show.
Simon Amstell