LARRY Dean is a natural storyteller. His new Edinburgh Fringe show is a masterclass on luring an audience to comedic safety before hitting them with the deep, the personal and the simply shocking.
The Double Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee is back on stage after his last show Bampot was a hit with audiences and critics alike. His new routine, Fudnut, explores relationships, friendships and grief in a hilarious hour of confessional storytelling and observational comedy.
The Glasgow comedian’s journey into the world of comedy started straight after he finished his exams at school. Dean tells The National: “I got f*** all in terms of Highers, just art and music. All the unis rejected me apart from one – for a writing and performance degree in Solent University in Southampton, one of the worst-performing universities in the UK.”
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Dean said he initially wasn’t going to go but got caught up in a bad crowd in Glasgow and felt a move was needed. “I was running away essentially,” he said. “I thought I’d better move to Southampton and start again.”
It was at university that Dean would lay the foundations of his stand-up career, setting up a comedy night with some friends. The trouble with trying to make it as a comic, though, as Dean soon learned, was cash. He didn’t have much of it so gave up drinking for two years so he could afford to travel to gigs. “How miserable is that?”
He said: “Two years of uni sober so I could get to gigs because you don’t get paid the first few years of stand-up.
“I was spending £40-£50 on a train to get to a gig and back to do five minutes.”
Laughing, he adds: “When I say it out loud I think ‘what a waste of time’. If someone asked me if I’d do it again I’d say no.”
But in the end, it all worked out, with the comedian having racked up his fair share of award nominations and five-star reviews, as well as the odd appearance on Mock the Week and Live at the Apollo.
Dean’s new show moves from the incredibly funny, to the incredibly touching, and confessing to things most of us would never dream of but we are thankful someone did.
Although a deeply personal hour, Dean wasn’t necessarily aware of the amount of information he was divulging at first. “I didn’t even realise how confessional my show was. I never do until people start reviewing it or ask me questions,” he said.
Working grief into a comedy show is no small challenge but it’s something Dean has done with remarkable tact. He said: “When you talk about most subjects you can say, ‘oh well if the audience laughs that’s fine’ because you can push it off as a joke.
“But when it comes to grief, you kind of think, ‘will I hate myself after this show for talking about it like this?’. That was the main thing I struggled with.”
Unlike a joke, Dean says, exploring grief on stage doesn’t come with the immediate reward but it’s worthwhile nevertheless.
He said: “When you talk about your feelings on stage that’s the craziest you’re ever going to feel.
"It’s emotionally exhausting. You have the feelings you’re feeling and then the embarrassment of telling it to hundreds of people thinking please laugh at the next joke because if you don’t I’ll jump off the stage.
“It’s a minefield but it’s worth it because it’s heart-warming that people give a f***.”
One story that had the crowd roaring with laughter was the Glaswegian’s “terrifying” experience of Abu Dhabi which ended in a permanent ban from the United Arab Emirates.
Security at the airport found anti-HIV pills in Dean’s luggage (the pills are used as a preventative measure) and he was worried officers would find out he was gay, which is illegal in the country.
He said: “It wasn’t until after I left Abu Dhabi that I saw what happened to people in the same situations as me. And there are still people in jail over there for really minor offences and they’re trapped there for years.
“It was a crime in Abu Dhabi I never knew I was committing.
It would have been my absolute hell on Earth.”
Dean is performing Fudnut at the Fringe until August 28
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