Simon King

This is not a normal interview, and Sumit Anand would like you to know it. Asked about his first open mic, he says "forget it, next question". Asked whether he enjoys the stage or just the laugh: "not all questions are supposed to be answered". Most podcasts suck, he says, because everyone keeps agreeing with each other.What follows, with comedian Shivanshu Dwivedi in the middle seat, is forty minutes of argument, riffing and the occasional straight answer. Sumit started stand-up in 2013 with, by his own account, very little self-awareness - which, he says, is exactly what gave him the confidence. He talks about the years he spent deliberately playing the devil to see how much the hate would hit him (a lot, and it still does), why a real comedian never really likes his own material, and the Chandigarh shows where it took 25 minutes of scolding the room before he could start.Travelling to London and Edinburgh taught him that audiences and bad joke writers are the same everywhere. They also get into satire, Seinfeld and Talking Funny, the comics' cricket match in Chandigarh, whether crowd work will be all that survives social media, and why everyone keeps linking India with storytelling.Strong language and dark jokes throughout.Hop For Pop is a series of long conversations with comedians - not your typical promotional interview.Chapters0:00 Intro: Indian stand-up, from Johnny Lever to YouTube0:58 Sumit and the YouTube era2:00 "It's my birthday" and evolving2:17 The courage to lose your audience2:55 Why most podcasts suck4:39 A detour no one planned6:07 Start with your worst6:56 "OK, I'll start with comedy"7:03 Evolving, and loserism8:32 Nathan Fielder10:15 Stand-up is personal11:01 Shivanshu on inside and outside material13:52 Offending people, and conviction14:44 Waiting for the audience to catch up15:55 25 minutes of scolding Chandigarh18:15 Chasing trends, and being broke19:31 "Flabbergasted"20:34 A real comedian never likes his material21:02 Bombing and thick skin22:26 The laughs still hit23:48 Stealing jokes24:22 What got him into stand-up25:09 George Carlin25:49 Late cultural exposure27:17 Performing in London28:43 Is satire dying?30:19 Joke writing is a rare skill31:12 Seinfeld and Talking Funny32:58 Are Scottish people funnier?33:34 Physical comedy and the comics' cricket match34:07 Will only crowd work survive?36:36 India and "storytelling"38:08 Wrapping upRead the full interview on Hop For Pop: https://hopforpop.com/sumit-anand-interview/Watch the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvJaib_i9tIFollow Sumit Anand: @chant_anandFollow us on Instagram: @hopforpop and @thecomicsunseen

Greg Stone went over the light by ten minutes at his first show, spent seven years telling himself comedy was a hobby, and moved to New York in 2008 when Mike Vecchione told him he was getting up five times a night, not five times a month.The first time you go on stage, he says, you are the most yourself you will ever be, because you have no idea what you are doing. Then you become self-aware, like Adam and Eve noticing they are naked, and the next twenty years are spent trying to get back there with some craft attached.He explains the crowd-work clip that changed things for him, the one where he asks a woman about her family and she tells him her father murdered her mother. He had options in that moment and chose to make every joke about himself. Being mean to a crowd, he says, is fight or flight: you are scared they will win. Strength is showing vulnerability, not hiding it.A large part of the conversation is about comedians being cut from a SiriusXM comedy channel and losing the royalties that pay back the cost of making a special. Greg says the channel was not failing, that the list of who stayed makes no sense, and that the loss is bigger than money: it was one of the few places a six-minute story could live. Those are his views and he is direct about them.Also in here: why bringer shows are a scam, why he does not believe in laughs per minute (Tyson hits you once and you go down - who won the fight?), why comedy is currently run by a lot of different McDonald's, seeing Kevin Hart do half an hour at the Comedy Cellar, and the time he tried to tip James Corden five dollars on The Late Late Show.Chapters0:00 Cold open: "Strength is showing vulnerability"0:41 The first open mic, and running the light1:44 Bringer shows are a scam2:04 "I just do it for fun" - then New York in 20083:00 Who actually pockets the money4:09 The first show: "I killed"5:19 The first time on stage, you're the most yourself7:10 Writing or crowd work?8:42 Following the fear10:15 "My dad murdered my mother"11:44 The Comedy Cellar story behind that clip13:04 "Greg, you need to always let go"14:28 "Maybe if you were funnier you'd be famous"15:08 Two of the three things I want17:36 "They're not funny" is the one insult that doesn't work18:35 Art versus business19:15 McDonald's sells the most cheeseburgers19:40 Kevin Hart at the Cellar21:12 What a special costs, and how royalties pay it back22:21 The list that makes no sense22:47 Raw Dog versus Comedy Greats24:11 How listeners found new comics25:03 Margaret Cho26:13 Be relentless - and why Instagram is bad for comedy27:37 A five-minute bit cut down to one line28:39 Laughs per minute29:23 Whole wheat bread, and Tyson hitting you once30:43 Taking the viral crowd-work clip apart31:52 "Post it right now"34:19 Being mean to the audience is fear35:14 Strength is showing vulnerability36:10 Melting down on stage37:14 Making the audience part of the bit38:20 The funny guy at the party39:11 25 minutes, then they cut the mic40:18 The first hour, and the next one41:30 Tipping James Corden43:32 The worst room45:37 A word to the comics who were cutRead the full interview on Hop For Pop: https://hopforpop.com/greg-stone-interview/Press kit: https://hopforpop.com/greg-stone-press-kit/Follow us on Instagram: @hopforpop and @thecomicsunseen

Simon King went up third at an open mic on 8 February 2000, doesn't remember a word of his set, and walked off thinking: I need to do that again. Since August 2002 it has been his only job, and by his count he has done close to 10,000 shows.In this conversation he talks about being an instinct-based comic who improvises and remembers rather than writing on paper, why he has never gone on stage asking how to make the audience laugh (only what he needs to say), and the advice from a famous comic that the audience is "collateral damage". He explains why his special Furious was, literally, him being furious, how As Good As or Better Than tried to make that rage accessible, and why comedy is beat-based - rhythm being one of the oldest things humans respond to.He also talks about the bit that opens "trans women are real women" and deliberately walks the audience to the edge of an offensive joke and then refuses it, about not presenting himself as a victim on stage, and about the night, years ago, when he stopped halfway through a set that was working because he no longer wanted to do it.And he tells the Robin Williams story: meeting him at a local room while he was in town filming Insomnia, inviting him to a tiny open mic that, the night he turned up, had no audience at all - and the visa letter Williams later wrote calling him "truly a gifted comedian".His next special, made entirely in Canada, is due around the end of the year.Chapters0:00 Cold open: Robin Williams and the empty room0:15 "It takes a long time to get this bitter"1:47 Talking comedy with a non-comedian2:54 Three jokes in the time of one5:06 Improvising instead of writing7:51 His first open mic13:45 "They're just collateral damage"16:16 Should you be a comedian?18:12 Stand-up takes the brakes off19:47 Furious, then As Good As or Better Than24:22 Comedy is rhythm26:14 "Trans women are real women"30:50 Not punching down33:17 Aware of privilege, never the victim35:08 3,000 videos and the social media game39:51 Riffing vs writing42:14 The industry, and the HBO festival in 200544:59 The night he stopped mid-set48:33 How many people do you need to like you?50:23 Hugging crying people after shows52:22 Meeting Robin Williams58:19 What made Robin Williams special1:00:29 Norm, Hedberg and guided absurdity1:02:25 George Carlin, Jammin' in New York1:04:43 Ditching the microphone1:06:38 The new special1:08:49 His Mount Rushmore of specialsRead the full interview on Hop For Pop: https://hopforpop.com/simon-king-interview/Press kit: https://hopforpop.com/simon-king-press-kit/Follow us on Instagram: @hopforpop and @thecomicsunseen

Sevrin Willinder is a clown, and somebody else told him so first. He was playing a piano repairman in a dramatic scene at drama school. His mentor told him to play something well, then act…Willinder describes his own show as really fun and really dumb. That is the pitch, and he does not dress it up. Underneath it is an hour built around friendship and human connection. It came out of a few years of travelling and meeting people. His stated dream for it is almost embarrassingly modest. He wants somebody to make a friend in his audience. He would like to hear about it a year later. That is a lot to ask of a postman sketch. The audience participation is the mechanism, not the gimmick. He appears entirely serious about it.Sevrin talks about his comedy career and his show "Time Travel Postman."Read the full interview on Hop For Pop: https://hopforpop.com/sevrin-willinder-a-postman-who-is-bad-at-his-job/Press kit: https://hopforpop.com/sevrin-willinder-press-kit/Follow us on Instagram: @hopforpop and @thecomicsunseen

Rebecca Wolf auditioned for her first school play and was too shy to get a part. She watched the show from the audience and decided that was exactly what she wanted to do. The next year she landed the role of Glenn the Gull. As she puts it now, she has gone from bird to pig, and intends to work through the whole animal kingdom eventually.The pig is Peg, star of The Pigs Next Door, and she was born from a thirty-second audition prompt: you've just received a call from the IRS. Rebecca decided the person taking that call was the third little pig, because her eldest brother had hired the big bad wolf to destroy his siblings' houses for the insurance money. She already owned a pig costume. The character stuck.What grew around Peg is an immersive, improvised sitcom in which the audience are the neighbours. A pink telephone gets thrown into the crowd, and whoever catches it becomes a character they've just heard described. There's a stuffed pig husband called Joel who can't argue back, an original song, a burlesque number that is deliberately terrible, and Boston Conservatory training in devised theatre underneath all of it.In this conversation on The Comics Unseen she also talks about the high-school senior project that was supposed to help the community. She did forty-five minutes of stand-up about her boss, put it on YouTube, and got threatened with a lawsuit, then stopped doing stand-up for years because she thought it made her a bad person. There's Clown Gym in New York, which she says broke her wide open and taught her that she likes to be in charge; why "yes, and" doesn't mean agreeing with your scene partner; the heckler she stopped by pointing out he'd just broken into her house; and the man she cast as an Amazon delivery driver who simply said "no, I don't work for Amazon" and gave her the biggest laugh of the night by accident.It is, in her own words, not deep. It's meant to be fun.The Comics Unseen is a series of long conversations with comedians you haven't heard of yet.Read the full interview on Hop For Pop: https://hopforpop.com/from-glenn-the-gull-to-peg-the-pig-rebecca-wolfs-unlikely-path-through-comedy/Press kit: https://hopforpop.com/rebecca-wolf-press-kit/Follow us on Instagram: @hopforpop and @thecomicsunseenKeywords: Rebecca Wolf, The Pigs Next Door, immersive comedy, improv, clown, character comedy, Boston Conservatory, Clown Gym, Groundlings, UCB, Brooklyn comedy, New York comedy, women in comedy, comedian interview, comedy podcast, The Comics Unseen.

Jackie Joy moved from Brazil to Vancouver with, in her words, almost no English. She'd had a good marketing career back home, but in Canada she couldn't communicate. On her first project her boss replied "Roger that," and she spent the whole day looking for someone called Roger. Her colleagues called her Roger for a year.Then she walked into the comedy club across the street from her office. She had already handed in a letter saying she was leaving Canada. After that first open mic she went back to her boss and asked to stay. As she puts it, comedy decided her next steps.In this conversation on The Comics Unseen, Jackie talks about doing stand-up in a second language: keeping the broken English in on purpose, because the jokes stop making sense without it; listening back to a recording and hearing the audience repeat her accent to each other; and why Brazilians living abroad are the one audience who fully get the material. With only about 6% of Brazil speaking English, her act doesn't travel home, so for shows in Brazil she writes new material in Portuguese, a language she says uses far more words, while English forces you to cut.She is candid about the hard parts too. She once took eight minutes to tell a story she now tells in three, cried after her first real laugh, and froze completely on stage in her third month, then didn't perform again for three months.Instead of waiting for gatekeepers, she builds her own rooms, producing the shows How I Met My Trauma and Only Fails, and describes herself as "80% marketing, 20% comedian" after twenty years of speaking to rooms of 300 at startup events. She also talks about performing for Judy Carter for the first time after a year of working for her, cutting her set down to a laugh every ten seconds, and opening for Brazilian comedian Rodrigo Marques.The Comics Unseen is a series of long conversations with comedians you haven't heard of yet.Read the full interview on Hop For Pop: https://hopforpop.com/comedy-decided-my-next-steps-an-interview-with-jackie-joy/Follow us on Instagram: @hopforpop and @thecomicsunseenKeywords: Jackie Joy, stand-up comedy, immigrant comedy, Brazilian comedian, Vancouver comedy, Canadian comedy, comedy in a second language, women in comedy, How I Met My Trauma, Only Fails, Judy Carter, Rodrigo Marques, comedian interview, comedy podcast, The Comics Unseen.

Read the full interview: https://hopforpop.com/diogo-portugal-built-the-brazilian-comedy-scene-he-now-performs-in/Diogo Portugal is Brazilian, despite the surname. Diogo was his great-grandfather's name, Portugal is just his last name, and he has spent a career explaining that his name is Portugal but he is from Brazil. Curitiba, to be exact.He started by accident. A friend was throwing a going-away party to raise money and asked him to do a few minutes. He had never faced an audience. He did jokes, impressions and a character, and people weren't laughing much, until he lifted the microphone off the stand. He got looser, he moved, and people started laughing.There were no comedy clubs in Brazil then. Comics went on when the jazz band took a break. Years later he dropped the wigs and the characters for pure stand-up, which meant walking on as himself and explaining to people what stand-up comedy even was.Now he runs Risorama, a festival that pairs the biggest names in Brazilian comedy with newcomers nobody has heard of, and he explains why the unknowns often win the night: nobody expects anything from them.He also talks about what happens when a joke meets the law. He describes how his friend Leo Lins faced around two million reais in penalties and the threat of years in prison over his material, before being acquitted, at which point Diogo booked him for the festival. Diogo has faced legal action over jokes himself. He is clear that a joke is not an opinion, and equally clear that newcomers reaching for the darkest material usually aren't ready for it yet.In this episode:Why it's Diogo, not DiegoHis first ever set, and taking the mic off the standPerforming in the gap when the jazz band took its breakTrading wigs and impressions for his own words"There's no rehearsing for comedy. You just go and do it."Why you are never safe on stageBuilding Risorama, and why unknown comics often winStarting a Brazilian roastLeo Lins, and comedy and the law"A joke is not your opinion. It's just a joke."Writing from his own life and the week's headlinesHis show Improprio Para Politicos, not appropriate for politiciansPerforming in English in Tokyo, New York and MiamiWatch the full interview on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOqBYEPgUm0More from Hop For PopWebsite: https://hopforpop.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopforpop/The Comics Unseen: https://www.instagram.com/thecomicsunseen/

In 2022, when the mobilisation started in Russia, comedians began arriving in Almaty with nowhere to perform. A 28-year-old comic and his wife opened an 800-square-metre room and let them in. Four years later, Almaty Central Stand Up Club is the hub of stand-up comedy in Central Asia.This is a long conversation with its co-founder, Nuraskan, recorded in Almaty, about building a comedy scene almost from scratch, in Kazakh and Russian, languages that reach about 21 million people worldwide and no further.He is remarkably unsentimental about it. Nobody set out to save comedy during the war; it was simply the only thing any of them were good at. In four years the club has never charged a comedian for stage time. Thirty comics get three minutes each at the weekly open mic, and the ones worth watching move up to five minutes, then ten, then a paid weekend slot. For a year or two he sat with anyone who asked and took their material apart line by line, what he calls being an author for somebody.There's a very funny stretch about trying to book a Western headliner. The club ran an entire marketing campaign aimed at Joe Rogan before someone on his team explained that a twenty-hour flight was never going to happen. They actually landed Chris Tucker, whose management said yes, and then couldn't raise the fee: hundreds of thousands, he points out, not the millions the Saudis pay, and money that exists in Almaty if anyone will spend it.He's candid about the pressure, too. Comedy in Kazakhstan is controlled, he says, not the way journalists are chased, but enough that everyone is careful, and a comedian walks a thin rope between government attention and a fierce local cancel culture.And he has a sharp answer to a question comics ask constantly. Everyone obsesses over output, the hour a day of writing, the discipline. What most of them lack, he says, is input: they aren't curious, don't watch good films or documentaries, and don't have meaningful conversations. Comedy comes from living, which is why comedians get better with age.Also in here: where Kazakh comedy really comes from (aitys, a centuries-old improvised verse duel played on the dombyra that's essentially a roast battle), what independence in 1991 meant for comedians who had always answered to Moscow, a roast that hit a million views in eight days, the Eddie Murphy special subtitled into Kazakh that shaped a generation, why Louis C.K. is a demigod across the post-Soviet world, and why he still tells new comics to read Judy Carter's The Comedy Bible, but only after they've found their own voice.The Comics Unseen is a series of long conversations with comedians you haven't heard of yet, and with the people building the rooms they'll come up in.Read the full interview on Hop For Pop: https://hopforpop.com/nuraskhan-baskozhaev-central-stand-up-almaty/Follow us on Instagram: @hopforpop and @thecomicsunseenKeywords: Almaty comedy, Central Stand Up Almaty, Kazakhstan stand-up, Kazakh comedy, Central Asia comedy, comedy club owner, open mic, Russian comedians, comedy podcast, stand-up comedy, comedy advice, Joe Rogan, Chris Tucker, Louis C.K., aitys, The Comics Unseen.

Krystyna Hutchinson and Corinne have made a podcast together every single Friday for nearly thirteen years without missing one. This is a long conversation about what that actually costs, and what it gives you.Krystyna had just come off a month at the Edinburgh Fringe with a solo show she spent five years writing — one that goes to the hardest places in her life and still puts jokes on either side of them. She's clear-eyed about why she waited that long. You can always tell, she says, when someone puts something on stage before they've healed from it: "Game recognise game."Corinne is the one who'll tell you the heckling videos you see online are mostly a myth. She isn't trying to shock anyone — she's trying to make you think about something familiar in a new way, and if that feels shocking, you're probably living in an echo chamber. She also runs a horror stand-up show at the Comedy Store, which exists largely because Los Angeles turned out to be far more goth than New York.Along the way: how they actually met, through an internship and a bringer show. Why their on-stage chemistry can't be manufactured — thirteen years of it, and Krystyna reckons if you could bottle it she'd be a billionaire. What Slutsgiving actually is, and why audience members volunteer their worst secrets for it. Sabotaging her own SNL audition. Why non-comedians should never be in green rooms. And two listener stories, including a man who'd been secretly married for four of the ten years he was with someone.And near the end, the line worth staying for. Heartache feels permanent, and it isn't: one day a friend will mention his name and you'll have to think for a second who they mean.Content note: this episode discusses suicide and parental abuse, as the subject of Krystyna's solo show. Both are handled seriously and non-graphically.The Comics Unseen is a series of long conversations with comedians you haven't heard of yet.Read the full interview on Hop For Pop: https://hopforpop.com/krystyna-hutchinson-and-corinne-fisher-have-never-missed-a-friday-in-13-years/Press kit: https://hopforpop.com/krystyna-hutchinson-press-kit/Press kit: https://hopforpop.com/corinne-fisher-press-kit/Follow us on Instagram: @hopforpop and @thecomicsunseenKeywords: Krystyna Hutchinson, Corinne, Guys We F****d, Slutsgiving, Sorry About Last Night, comedy podcast, stand-up comedy, Edinburgh Fringe, solo show, comedy duo, Comedy Store, heckling, comedian interview, The Comics Unseen.

Barry Katz has spent more than twenty years managing stand-up comedians, and the client list is faintly ridiculous: Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Jim Gaffigan, Dane Cook, Nick Swardson, Bert Kreischer — and Louis CK, his very first client, who helped him hang the lights when he opened the Boston Comedy Club. In New York. The name is not a mistake, and there is a story behind it.In this long-form interview on The Comics Unseen, Barry sits down with Kishan Jhunjhunwala for a genuinely unguarded conversation about comedy management, the comedy business, and what three decades on the other side of the microphone actually teaches you.WHAT'S IN THIS EPISODEBarry explains why he kept signing comedians young — he liked the hunger in a twenty-two-year-old more than the cynicism in a forty-year-old — and what he looked for before anybody else had heard the name. He talks about running a room where he chose who got on stage, and what that responsibility does to your taste.He makes a case about effort that is hard to shake. Ask anyone for their favourite Tom Brady moment and you'll hear about a throw. Nobody's favourite is the footage of Brady alone on a folding chair watching film for two hours — and that, Barry argues, is the only part that ever mattered. The work nobody sees is the work.He is generous about Dane Cook, who he thinks understood what the internet was going to do to stand-up comedy before anyone else did, and who got remarkably little credit for it. He's candid about why he stopped performing himself: the same material could kill one night and die the next, and he couldn't live inside that.And then there's crowd work. Barry loves crowd work. When he hosted, he says, it was all he did. He'll happily watch Matt Rife, Jessica Kirson or Aries Spears do it for an hour. But he poses a challenge to anyone building a career on it: write down the ten most influential comedians who ever lived, search their names alongside "crowd work" on YouTube, and count the clips. His answer is zero. He walks through Don Rickles as the one possible exception — then argues Rickles wasn't really doing crowd work at all. It's the most interesting disagreement in the episode, and he makes it while defending the thing he's arguing against.There's also an honest stretch on fairness. One comic grinds for forty-two years and never breaks; another gets it in four months. Barry doesn't pretend there's justice in it. He talks about Kill Tony outgrowing the room it started in, why Mark Normand broke through, how George Carlin reinvented himself every decade — and why, if you're great enough, none of the rules apply to you anyway.The best moment might be the smallest. Barry tells a story about seeing the Obamas in a Chicago restaurant, and a single line from Michelle Obama that quietly reframes the whole idea of luck.1:13 Favourite comedian, dead and alive2:49 Dane Cook saw the internet coming4:05 Who gets the credit5:04 Chappelle, Burr, CK, Gaffigan — all of them young6:27 The Michelle Obama story7:58 We write, direct and star in our own lives9:24 The $850 apartment on Venice Beach11:12 When life breaks your legs13:28 Why he stopped performing and started managing16:42 Opening the Boston Comedy Club — in New York17:24 Louis CK, first client17:47 Why he signed them young19:16 "It was my house. I chose who was in it"20:45 Watching Kill Tony outgrow the belly room24:50 Comedy isn't fair: 42 years against four months26:23 Rogan, SNL, Carson — the break has always existed27:19 Why Mark Normand broke through27:53 What's your favourite Tom Brady moment?31:31 Carlin reinvented himself every decade34:19 If you're great, there are no rules36:35 Get out of the way of great artists37:23 The one line he argued out of a special41:14 Search their crowd work. You'll find zero43:43 Only Don Rickles — and was that even crowd work?46:48 Put your Mount Rushmore together47:50 Where to find himWebsite: barrykatz.comInstagram: @barrykatz