Daniel Sloss on the Riyadh Comedy Festival: ‘What price is your soul?’
Ahead of three massive gigs at Edinburgh Playhouse, comedian Daniel Sloss reflects with Jay Richardson on how the rigours of the Fringe formed him, the price of integrity in comedy and mending fences with UK television
Conscience-led, instinctively bolshie, Daniel Sloss’ awkward relationship with the Edinburgh Fringe reflects his wider suspicion of Britain’s comedy industry. Despite having performed in 55 countries, he’s impeccably local, having watched Festival shows from nine years old. He made his stand-up debut at the Fringe in 2008, aged just 17, and has returned every year except two. But he hardly seems part of the Festival, existing outside its awards, reviews and parochial politics, contemptuous of comics being pitted in competition, ‘something that took me 15 years to unlearn’, he says.
His latest show is titled Bitter, yet the man himself remains philosophical. ‘Whether I like it or not, the Fringe made me,’ the 35-year-old admits. Not in terms of recognition or career opportunities but the intensity of doing the same hour every day for 25 days. Characteristically, he dismisses his first five shows as ‘sucking shit’.
‘I could have done the cowardly tactic of delaying my debut for four years when I’d been going for seven,’ he states. Those early, decent but unspectacular reviews devastated him. However, he urges would-be comics ‘to just get on and do it; the sooner you put in 10,000 hours, the faster you’ll get better’.
Notwithstanding an ill-judged BBC sitcom pilot and encouragement from the likes of Russell Howard and Jimmy Carr, the London-born, Fife-raised comic’s unwillingness to relocate to the English capital meant that television commissioners ignored him, he says. Instead, in his twenties, Sloss sceptically accepted Suzy Eddie Izzard’s advice to perform where English is a second language, universalised his material and toured Europe relentlessly. Attracting the patronage of US late-night host Conan O’Brien and ultimately, Netflix, his statement specials for the streamer, Dark and Jigsaw, changed everything and he became one of the few British comics to crack America.
Recently, he’s had security at US gigs on occasion, following the Channel 4 documentary Russell Brand: In Plain Sight. Ahead of Brand’s trial for sexual offences in October, Bitter explores Sloss’ ‘shocking’ realisation that he was the sole UK comedy figure willing to go on the record about the former stand-up, who denies all charges, leaving the Scot feeling frustrated and naïve. Beyond being ‘the right thing to do’ after talking in his 2018 show X about a friend’s rape, Sloss reasons that it’s ‘very rare in life you get to walk the walk when you’ve talked the talk… I thought about conversations that I’ve had with my wife. I wanted to live with myself and not undermine what X was saying.’
Consequently, when offered £80,000 in October to appear at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, he rejected it, wary of culturewashing Saudi Arabia’s appalling women’s rights record. ‘Their biggest get would have been Hannah Gadsby but they weren’t going to get them,’ he says. His integrity-based decision proved very easy. ‘But what if they’d offered £5m?’ he wonders. ‘What price is your soul?’ Carr and Jack Whitehall chose differently and Sloss continues taking pot shots at fellow comics. ‘Only those more successful than me,’ he stresses. ‘When they bite back, I tell them I’m not doing it to be a dick.’ He hesitates. ‘Absolutely, I am doing it to be a dick. But grow up, it’s a joke. It’s petulant jealousy, the version of me in the fucking name of my show. Maybe the irony is lost on some.’
The huge Taskmaster fan has spent ‘so long burning bridges’, not least with the Channel 4 format’s powerful production company, that he accepts he won’t appear on the hit show anytime soon. But he’s happy spending more time at home with his kids. And he’s edging towards some kind of rapprochement with UK television, having just shot QI. In his nine months not touring after his daughter’s birth in 2024, he also co-wrote two sitcoms and is enjoying developing them. ‘One is about an angry Scottish comedian. The other is about being an angry Scottish person in America.’ He laughs. ‘Look, I’m not a great actor!’
Daniel Sloss: Bitter, Edinburgh Playhouse, 14 August, 8pm; 15 August, 4pm, 8pm.