Sid Singh: From Sleeping in Cars to Romanian TV - A Comedian’s Survival Guide

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, Screen Rats.

And here's another episode of Television times.

Now today, my guest is Sid Singh.

He's an American comedian who's based in Europe.

I keep that loose because there's a hell of a story behind this guy, and I think he's an interesting character.

So I was lucky enough to catch one of Sid's shows while he was in Edinburgh.

And although this is kind of a comic chat, a comedian chat, it doesn't really delve too far into television and the format questions and stuff like that.

There is a story about television in here.

It's convoluted.

We do get to it, but there's a hell of a story in here.

So do keep listening.

And he's a political comedian.

I use the word unashamedly, but I mean, I don't know why we're even saying shame as I bring up.

So as for the podcast, what are we, about a year and a half in now?

It's going pretty well.

Got a lot of great guests lined up, got a lot of records in the bag and some real good ones coming up in next week, actually, a week and a half, I start recording some new remote records and I much, much prefer in-person records as most of these ones I'm putting up now are.

There's very few remote records that I have to, I say deal with just because there's always some kind of problem.

The other end is not a decent mic or whatever, you know, that kind of stuff.

So the next few anyway, they're all in person.

There's a person sitting in front of me and we're chatting and we got a rapport, which I think is the best way forward unless you really, really can't make it work.

So with that in mind, let's get on to my chat with Sid.

He was very gracious to come over and talk to me straight after one of his afternoon shows during August at the Fringe.

And it was a good little chat.

It wasn't very long.

It's a short-ish one.

But yeah, I hope you enjoy it.

This is me talking to the talented man that is Sid Singh.

Just checking.

You do know that Edinburgh Fringe is fucking ages ago, right?

Roll up, roll up and welcome to another edition of Television times with your host me, Steve Otis Gunn, where I'll be talking to someone you do know or someone you don't.

It might be funny, but it might not be.

But it's always worth tuning in for.

So here we go with another episode of Television times.

Hopefully on a good day.

So what I liked about you the other day, I hope you're okay with me saying this, but there was a couple that came and they said to you something like, oh, we have to leave in the last 10 minutes.

Is that okay?

And you went, no, no, I'd rather you just didn't come.

And they didn't think you were serious at first.

And I really enjoyed that.

Not in a sadistic way, in a kind of, of course, what were you talking about, leaving before the end?

You're fucking, you're going to disturb, especially in that room with the big door and the...

Well, it's not just a big swinging door, right?

It's also that really sad reality, which is that in the last 10 minutes is when I try to get people to raise money for refugees with me.

Yeah.

Leaving then is going to lead to less donations from everyone else because they'll be too distracted to feel fully invested in the show.

And I think for regular people, they're not used to a show actually trying to live the values espoused by the comedian.

Normally, the comedian is like, I've seen a lot of political comedy and half of them, they're just like, oh man, now I guess that's just why I have so much anxiety because there's nothing we can do.

I'm like, well, or you could do something.

You put your money where your mouth.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that's good.

Which I know makes me sound like a self-righteous cunt.

But no, no, no, I don't think so.

I think there's a certain level to obviously, I mean, would you call yourself a political comedian?

Is that what you actually call yourself?

Yeah, unashamedly, and that's good.

And there shouldn't be a shame involved in it.

But I think a lot of people, they want to have a laugh, but they don't want to necessarily, yeah, I mean, most of the podcast, the biggest, if you think of the biggest podcasts in the world, comedy wise, is probably Marron, right?

And that is heavily political.

And people listen to that avidly, as do I, you know?

So I don't think it's necessarily what people don't want to listen to.

Do you get people that are like, because when I went to sit in Nish Kumar, for instance, there was a guy there that clearly did not want to be there, an American guy, and he actually got on his phone, and there was a whole kerfuffle.

I heard about this.

You heard about it?

Nish was telling me about this.

Yeah, I was there for that.

What a prick.

Yeah, absolutely.

What a prick.

But also, I would say, generally speaking, most of the people in Nish's audience know who he is and know what they're in for.

For me, it's not that people don't...

Do you know what they're in for if they read the flyer?

You'd be surprised at how many people don't read the flyer.

That they're at a comedy festival like, we'll just watch the next thing and we hope we laugh.

And maybe if they knew I was a political comedian, maybe if they knew where the money goes, they would be much better at just listening and enjoying the show for what it is.

But half the time, people don't have the attention span anymore to even do that.

And that's certainly not most people, but again, in smaller rooms, rooms that are under 100 seats, often two or three people being bad eggs can really disrupt the entire show.

And what's really frustrating for me is that as a younger comic, this never was a problem for me because I was a political comic, but I wouldn't talk overtly about where the money was going.

So as a result, I could take a second to be like, okay, we're going to deal with these people.

We're going to make fun of them, get the audience back on site.

But in these new shows I've been writing, I don't have time in a 60-minute show.

I have time in an 80-minute show when you watch me on tour, but for a 60-minute show, it's just going to be what it is.

It's really hard to those constraints.

And at least you've got 60 because a lot of them are pushed into 50 minutes because there's a five-minute time around each side.

When I go on tour, when I'm in Europe, I'll often do a show with two halves, and the first 30 to 40 minutes will just be me doing crowd work with the audience.

Just having fun, just being silly, letting them see me for who I am as a real person, but not getting overtly into the show.

Then we have maybe an opener come on to start telling regular jokes that they really loved, something on Comic from Europe that I believe in.

Then we'll have a break, and then I'll come in and I'll do the show.

So the show is probably an hour 40, and there I feel like the people get their money's worth.

I'm often charging 15 to 25 bucks per ticket, depending on the city, and I feel like that's where they go, okay, but this is like a full evening, we're gonna have fun, we have plenty of time to get drinks, we can eat beforehand, and then afterwards, one of the things I'm the proudest of when I go on tour is often I will hang out with whoever wants to hang out after the show.

So there's normally a group of like 15, 20 of us at whatever theater or bar or pub or whatever, and that feels cool.

It feels like we're building a community of people who actually care about politics the way that we do.

Yeah, yeah.

And you are very much a European based comedian.

I mean, a lot of what you do.

That Umor show, is that like, Romania's got talent, is that what that is?

It's pronounced Ayumor.

Ayumor, sorry.

Took me a while for me to learn that.

No, no, no.

It's not my show.

It's Ayumor.

It's a Romanian television show.

Yeah.

You've been on it more than once?

I've done four episodes.

And how did that occur?

So that seems like quite a weird situation.

Very much so.

I was dating a Romanian comedian, and also my profile as an English speaking comedian in Europe has grown to the point where producers approached me to be like, hey, we think this is kind of weird, but we think you might be a good fit for the show.

Yeah.

And then, yeah, weirdly enough, I kept doing the show and I kept getting voted into the next rounds and stuff.

And I was like, OK, this is very strange, but whatever, man.

It's a chance to see another country.

One of my favorite things over the last five years is how much I've gotten to explore Europe and go to all these countries that as an American, I would never have normally considered.

I haven't just been to Romania.

I've been to like five different and performed in five different cities in Romania.

And most people wouldn't be able to put Romania on the map.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was the, hey, we've been to Europe, we've been to Paris and London for three hours.

And I go, yeah, we've been to Europe, dude.

Have you been to budapest?

No.

Have you been to Little Paris, a.k.a.

bucharest?

Yeah, exactly.

Have I been to bucharest?

No, I haven't.

I've been to Sofia.

Sofia?

Which one's that?

Bulgaria?

That's Bulgaria.

I'll tell you.

The secret to a lot of Eastern European cities, like Romania and Bulgaria, is that their biggest city is fine.

But their second or third biggest city is often amazing.

So in Bulgaria, Sofia is great, but go to Bansko.

It's like this weird mountain town.

It's constantly growing.

It's like become like a digital nomad enclave.

And normally, I don't love to associate with digital nomads, but they were lovely in that town.

They were so great, so open minded, so fun.

Same thing in Romania.

bucharest is a very good city, but Cluj is one of my favorite cities in all of Europe.

Just an amazing beach town with amazing coffee, amazing pizza.

I was like, this is, I've never even heard of this fucking place.

Yeah, I know.

I don't think I have.

A lot of the way you call people from where you're from, call it the Bay Area.

It sounds like, just tell me your town.

Is it Oakland?

Is it San Francisco?

Where is it?

So, the Bay Area, for those of you who don't know, Bay Area is San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, all those areas.

Are you the only comedian from there who happens to be hanging out in Romania's second city?

yes, but because of the sort of digital nomad inquiries, you weirdly find Bay Area humans all over Europe because a lot of them are tech workers who then get dissatisfied living in Silicon Valley, which is another term for the Bay Area, and they will move to some of the weirdest places.

You know, like, I remember I was in Bratislava and they were like, oh yeah, 20 minutes away, there's basically like Amazon's European headquarters for servers because it's super flat.

Bratislava is where I had one of my best coffees, actually, if we're talking about coffee.

Oh, okay, no, I would love your recommendations for that.

I know where the cafe is, I can see it.

It's in the main drag on the left.

But yeah, and I spent a lot of time in budapest because my wife's family are technically Hungarian, but not that they all live in Arizona, but we'll have the budapest experience.

I did budapest recently.

The funniest thing is after The Fringe last year, I agreed to go on a tour and it was one of the worst decisions of my life.

Because it wasn't a solo tour, which inherently means I'm making less money on the tour.

I had just won the award for Comedian's Comedian, the best performer of the whole Fringe.

Oh, big shot.

And then I slept in a car for two weeks.

And I was like, what am I doing to myself?

Cars, hostels, and the producer, for reasons I still don't understand, made the ticket so cheap because I think he wanted to impress us and sell the show out.

But inherently that meant we made so little money that it was just like, I didn't have to do this.

I could have just gone home and just had a fun week of me enjoying myself.

Yeah, what was I fucking thinking?

I've noticed this in other countries like when I spent some time in Thailand, I bumped into some comedians.

I did a little set at the Khao San Comedy Club in Bangkok once, and all the comedians there were like working in Vietnam and working in Thailand and Cambodia, and they were just going around.

There's some Americans, some Europeans, some aussies, this little contingent of people just moving around.

I don't think people are aware that that is a thing, that there are this group of quite often English-speaking comics in various parts of the world just doing that area and possibly living out there as well.

Well, yeah, it's a really weird thing, because I think Asia in terms of English-speaking comedy is maybe five to ten years behind Europe right now.

What you're seeing in both places though, is this explosion of English-speaking expats and immigrants moving to all of these places and suddenly wanting to have art that reflects them.

Yeah.

And so...

I hate the term expat though, it sounds...

Yeah, I use it interchangeably with immigrant.

I refuse to pretend there's a difference.

Yeah, there isn't.

Yeah, it's just white people in Spain.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's a great way to put it.

But it's one of those things where they are so hungry for comedy that relates to them, that doesn't require them to use whatever the natural language of that country is.

You can often sell a lot of tickets in those countries, not because they know who you are, but because they will see fucking anyone.

Yeah, in budapest, again, to go back to that, there was an English comedy night, but they would have British, mostly, headliners come through.

And I used to go, and I was like, oh, this is amazing.

But it wasn't on their name.

It was just the fact that there was an English comedy night.

And I bet it was packed.

It was, it was absolutely rammed with businessmen.

And that's what's so interesting, is now you're starting to see, because the scenes are getting big enough, a dilution of that for the first time ever.

It used to be, I remember when I first moved to Amsterdam in 2019, there was still a newness, I watched English comedy.

So there was only two or three places in the city you could go, and they weren't often on every night, except for, like, I worked for a company called Goom Chicago.

Yeah, I saw that one.

Which mostly does improv and sketch.

Yeah.

So were you sent there, or did you decide to move there because you got the job there?

I got the job there.

And so I auditioned for it in London, and I got on the first audition.

So it's like an Amsterdam troupe, essentially.

Yeah, so Goom Chicago was founded by these Chicago improvisers, hence the name, who moved there in the 90s.

And it has some level of fame now because the alumni have tended to go on to be very important people, people like Seth Meyers or Jordan Peele or Jason Sudeikis or Amber Ruffin or the writer for Pitch Perfect, so on, so on, so forth.

So it's like a Second City stroke, groundlingsy type thing.

It is very much a sister theater to Second City.

A lot of the original guys were Second City guys.

Keon Peele first met on a joint Boom Chicago Second City show.

Really?

Well, that hasn't worked out for them, has it?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

One of the greatest directors of all time, going into, my god.

But now you go back to Amsterdam now, and there are so many options for English comedy that now I think you can feel is like, well, is the city large enough for the supply that now exists?

And I believe it is, but it's become trickier in terms of marketing.

Right.

Yeah.

interesting.

Is it a lot of tourists or do you just get, is it locals mostly?

It sort of depends on the city and the time of year.

Barcelona and Amsterdam both seem to have this thing about trying to get less tourists to come to the city, which is this new this new thing.

I know I've never understood this thing because it's like, where do you guys think your money comes from?

I don't understand, like, your cities are so clean and nice and wonderful, but you know it's because we're pouring money into your economy.

But London banning Americans.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That would be it.

We'd have to get rid of the Rolf family finally.

A hundred percent.

No, I mean, this is the thing, listen, I understand the idea of people not respecting your cultures and destroying your cities and making you feel unhappy.

But those are British stag doof.

That's not the majority of tourists.

Where we are right now.

They hate us so much.

But some of them do.

Some of them absolutely do.

Some of them definitely do.

But it's one of those things where I also think the powers that be in all of those cities understand that they are so dependent on these tourists that unless they diversify their economies, they really have no choice.

And what's funny though is that can often result in policy discussions that I, as an American, was just not prepared for.

So I consider myself a very progressive person.

But in Amsterdam, when it comes to sex work, their main debate was should the red light district be in the center of the city or should it be moved to a very nice suburb?

And I was like, what is the progressive position?

Both of those sound fine as options.

The reality is once you learn about it, it's that they make so much more money in the center of the city, which is the hub of tourism, that in fact it is not progressive to ask them to move because you're hurting their yearly salaries.

And as an American, I'm like, we haven't even legalized sex work yet.

You know what I mean?

We have no concept of this conversation.

And even if you were in any way prudish or against it, I can't work out where I would be on that argument, to be honest with you.

sometimes it is a bit weird.

sometimes you just go there and then see someone in the window with their tits out and whatever, but it's also pretty cool.

So it's like, I don't know.

It goes both ways.

If you move it, then it's not the real one.

Then it turns into what they did in Shanghai, which I thought was really, really weird.

What they did was they got rid of old Shanghai and then built a sort of more touristy looking old Shanghai for the tourists.

And that's fucking weird.

That is not what you do.

So I hope they don't do that.

That is definitely disgusting.

But it's one of those things where, how do I put it?

It's an interesting thing to see what happens when countries are so much further in the conversation than you are.

But I'll tell you, I have the almost inverse experience because in Amsterdam, during the pandemic, the people I was staying with moved to the Red Light District.

So we then lived in the Red Light District.

And during the pandemic, because Red Light District was closed, we had this weird experience of it became this amazing neighborhood that was still cheap, that was in the center of the city.

And as things started to reopen before the Red Light District, suddenly you had everything available to you.

Six months later, when the sex working windows did reopen, the Red Light District fully reopened, you were like, oh, this is why people don't live here.

Yeah.

Because now it is a loud disgusting mess, not because of the sex workers, but because of the tourists who come in.

It's kind of the coffee shop thing.

Has that gone down a little bit as well?

Like tourists aren't allowed to smoke it or?

I've never understood.

I think there's rules that they get proposed all the time.

But as far as I can tell, see, the problem is the weirdest thing about living in Amsterdam is that I don't really smoke weed and I really have never used a sex worker.

So I'm sort of just as like, you know what it's like?

It's like being the reporter embedded with the troops.

Yeah.

All of these conversations are happening and they affect people, but they still don't actually affect me.

I'm just here with my notebook being like, what do you say?

I've got a little favor to ask you.

Could you please follow us on social media?

And if you've got time, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get them.

It all helps drive traffic back to the podcast.

But for now, let's get back to the current episode of Television times Podcast.

So I have one of the strangest comedy careers ever.

Okay.

I started my first year in San Diego.

At the end of that first year, I hosted a festival for the local college where I got to open for Joe Mandi, who went on to write for Parks and Rec and The Good Place.

And I also opened for Donald Glover.

Really?

Yeah.

This is when he was still very early into the phase of Childish Gambino.

I don't even think he was officially Gambino to the majority of the public yet.

And this festival was the same festival where the other musical headliner, because Donald Glover just did stand up to that festival.

That's a long go.

Yeah.

The musical headliner was this young Canadian rapper named Drake.

All right.

Okay.

And the four of us are still close to this day.

No.

But and then after that, I moved all the way to New York City where I started doing open mics.

Hang on.

He should have put you in Atlanta when they did the Berlin episodes.

Bare minimum.

Yeah.

You forgot where you came from, Donald.

No.

He was honestly, to this day, I really think he was one of the coolest, most humble, most normal celebrities I've ever met.

Very funny in person, very kind in person.

But then I moved to New York City and I met a bunch of celebrities who were not that kind.

And that was a Tia Leone who once shoved me because I was in her way when she was drunkenly walking.

Tia Leone?

Yeah.

Duchovny's ex-wife from the terrible films in the 90s?

Sure, sure, sure.

And I moved to New York City.

I started becoming a regular at some of the smaller clubs there.

And when I was there, I went to a terrible open mic where I met this very kind Australian comedian whose husband was a mainstay at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, an Australian comic named Dan Willis.

And his wife, Erin Melville, who I met kindly was like, hey, would you like to do a split bill with me?

It's going to be my first ever fringe.

And I was like, wow, yeah, that sounds amazing.

I met her at a terrible open mic.

This was in 2013.

I love a terrible open mic.

And oh, terrible.

Is everyone there comedians?

No, it was even weirder.

It was called 99 Cent tuesdays.

And the entire audience were given kush balls that they could throw at the comedians if they didn't like the act.

Yeah, the balls were very soft, but it was still very much a humiliating experience.

I mean, I never actually got them thrown at me, but my friends did.

And yeah, it didn't look fun.

Gong show etiquette.

Yeah, it's very much.

And I started coming to the Fringe.

I then applied for and got into law school.

But because I was at the Fringe and it overlapped with law school by a week, I had to defer my admission to law school by a full year.

And so I moved from New York City to Los angeles for that year where I worked for a law firm.

Then after that year, I went to San Francisco, where I did law school for three years.

Again, this whole time, I'm doing comedy every day.

Was it a backup or did you just want the degree?

My parents wanted me to do it.

Fair enough.

And I was still doing the number of Fringe every year.

And in 2016, I met this couple, Dan Aldred and Kat Butterfield.

And in 2018, they got their own TV show and hired me to do Punch Up on it.

And I was still in law school at the time.

What TV show was this?

It was called Modern Horror stories.

Comedy Central?

Comedy Central and the sketch show.

Yeah.

And I did Punch Up during my second semester.

I graduated.

I flew to London to be like, OK.

You know, I was like, I don't know if LA and New York, it just feels like I'm starting over and it's kind of humiliating.

I think I'd rather just move to the UK.

Like a man that wanted to escape America.

It wasn't because of like the political system.

It was my own feelings of failure.

Because when you move from New York and LA to San Francisco, you are going backwards in your career to a certain extent.

And I felt like the only way I could make things right with my own self and feel like I wasn't starting over after, you know, eight or nine years was to move to another country.

Start over there where I didn't have that sense of failure.

And were you straight into a sort of writer's job then straight away?

Yeah, except for the fact that when I landed there, the show was canceled.

Oh shit.

And then to get even weirder, three months after doing that, I was doing an improv show with a man named Mike OT.

Love that guy to this day.

He was a director at Boom Chicago.

And he was like, oh, you should audition for this thing.

And so three months after moving to the UK, I successfully auditioned for Boom Chicago.

And I flew to Amsterdam to start my career as an improviser and sketch artist.

And then, yeah, I became sort of the main writer at Boom Chicago for a while.

At least that's what the owner referred to me as, because I was a full class member, but I probably wrote the most sketches while I was there.

And then I left Boom Chicago to write for a TV show called Muslamic.

And then right after I wrote for Muslamic, the pandemic hit.

So you came back from Amsterdam, because that's a UK show as well.

Were you still based in Amsterdam when you did that?

Or did you come back?

I came back to London.

And then I went back to America to be like, hey, I did this fancy theater.

I've written for TV.

I'm sure I will get an agent and start my career as a American comedian in America.

And then before I could have a single meeting, the pandemic hit.

Bokken out, man.

And yep.

And I was living in my parents' guest room.

Very fortunate that I had that.

And then I got offered, well, I just realized basically that Europe opened up before America.

Really?

Yeah.

Which sounds weird to say, especially before California.

I was thinking America was open the whole time.

It's got a great lives in Arizona.

That's as in there.

In Arizona, it was open the whole time.

It was Sweden.

I had a friend in the pandemic who went to Arizona within the first month of everything locking down.

And she was like, I will never do that again, because the only people weird enough to go to a comedy show in Arizona as the audience are the people who have no interest in believing in COVID.

The people who have no interest in believing in COVID have no interest in hearing a woman talk.

So she had a very tough time.

I think in July 2020, I just went, fuck it.

And I moved to, I moved back to Amsterdam because I love the visa.

Boom gives you a two year visa, which I've since renewed.

And I guess I'll just live in Amsterdam.

So where do you live now?

So it gets even crazier because then I'm in Amsterdam and this TV show for NBC is having auditions.

And my friend just goes, dude, just do it.

Just apply.

And I get it.

And they want me to move to London where they're going to start filming.

And it's just like first time in my career where I'm going to make like an insane amount of money.

And by that, I mean, I would still be in the bottom third of my law school friends.

But for me, it was so much money.

I was like over the moon.

It was like 10k a month minimum.

And I was like, whoa, this is like life changing shit.

Just about full to live in London.

And then unfortunately, I'm supposed to sign the contract and I'm already in producer meetings.

I'm already talking to the other co-hosts I'll be having for the show.

And the contract gets delayed by a month because, oh, there's some weird production issues.

And I'm in London and London is back to being locked down because of the winter numbers spiking.

Oh, yes.

And so now I'm trapped in my cousin's house living in their guest bedroom.

Again, very fortunate.

And I have nothing to do because I'm just waiting for the show to start.

And every month it just gets delayed.

And even weirder, they have a team in New York and they start filming.

So I'm like, okay, well, listen, it's going to happen.

They're just trying to figure out whatever logistical issues they need to figure it out.

And then all of a sudden nothing is happening.

And it's six months and I'm broke.

And because I'm a fucking idiot, I buy this pair of glasses, you know, and they're like, hey, do you have insurance?

I'm like, I don't need insurance.

I have NBC money coming.

And then, you know, four or five months pass, NBC money hasn't shown up.

I need to start making money.

No advance, nothing.

Nothing.

And the thing is, although the UK is locked down, the rest of Europe is starting to reopen again.

Barcelona is open for some reason between the hours of like noon and four or five p.m.

That's when they can throw water over to us.

That's the only four hours.

And so they start having comedy shows from two to four p.m.

And so my friend Victor Patrascan goes, dude, you should come to Barcelona.

Yeah.

I have a place where you can stay.

Just do some shows here, make some money.

And I was like, yeah, I kind of need to do that.

I'm desperate.

And you can fly out.

You're allowed to fly.

I'm still allowed to fly out because I still have the EU visa.

And I go to Barcelona and I start performing.

And on day three or four of me being in Barcelona, I get a call from my producer.

And it's like, hey, I am so sorry, but we are on indefinite hiatus.

We don't know when the show's gonna actually start.

We're glad you're in Barcelona.

I hope you're having a lovely time in the sunny weather.

And I'm devastated.

To this day, I don't think I've ever felt lower in terms of I was so close to having a real, real life as a TV person who could afford stuff.

But in a flash, it was gone.

And then while I was there, the rest of Europe started opening up and suddenly I could go to Amsterdam for some shows.

Suddenly I could go to Berlin for some shows.

And everyone was so desperate to get out of their house.

It was still some of the best audiences of all time.

Yeah, very grateful.

They were so grateful.

And that's how I started making contacts all over Europe.

And suddenly I now have a Rolodex full of cities and bookers and producers and venues.

And I still do most of the work myself, but it's really nice when I get to have shows with some help.

So you made a whole world for yourself on the continent.

And thank God because I had to, because these glasses are nutty.

So what?

You've got the glasses in the states?

No, I got these glasses in London.

Oh, right.

So how much?

Because I got some glasses and they were really expensive.

I've only recently, these are readers, but my actual glasses, when I went to get them, I got a discount on them, but they were still like, you know, hundreds of pounds for a pair of glasses.

I can't actually believe they cost what they charge.

yes, 100%.

And mine was like, oh, you want the extra thin lenses?

Oh, you want the like clear reduction or whatever?

And I was like, yeah, fucking add it on.

Take 10% for yourself, kid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it...

Don't lose those glasses.

No, I'll never.

Yeah.

I'm so hesitant.

I'm pretty sure I need new glasses just because my eye level, I'm sure, has gotten worse.

But I refuse.

Yeah, but that's like a dentist bullshit.

Like when I actually, I swear to God, I haven't been to an optician for decades.

And I went and I get these glasses.

And then when I get them, he goes, see you in about 18 months.

I went, what for?

He goes, oh, you'll probably need a new pair by then.

I was like, dude, this is like a MacBook situation.

I don't want to be here for 10 years tops.

I don't want to see you again.

You know what I mean?

Absolutely.

Fucking 18 months, another hundreds of pounds.

Not a chance.

But it is that conversation.

But in any case, it was that thing where then I eventually do move to London again.

I actually get my first ever agent.

I hadn't had an agent yet.

Doing it all yourself.

Doing it all myself.

And the agent is an amazing, very lovely person, but a bad fit because I think she was better pre-pandemic when she had more contacts.

And after a pandemic with the industry changing, I think it took her a while to adjust.

And I'm sure she has fully adjusted now and her clients are amazing.

She's figured it out.

She's great.

But at the time, she had no idea what to do for me.

And she got me one gig.

I think my final TV writing gig recently has been for Comic Relief.

And that was a super fun experience.

UK Comic Relief.

UK Comic Relief.

And I'd worked with my friends, Audred and Butterfield on their online section a few years earlier.

So transitioning to the TV portion of it was very fun.

That's cool.

What did you do on Comic Relief?

I just wrote sketches.

Who performed them?

I don't even know.

I'm pretty sure I was gone by the time they actually selected the people.

I just submitted a bunch of ideas.

I submitted the sketches.

I haven't even seen the full.

You haven't?

No, I haven't.

So you don't even watch it?

I don't even care.

I'm just like...

Well, because especially shows like Comic Relief, it's so much fun to work on the sketches.

It's so much fun to...

My favorite thing in the world is when you're actually on set.

So actually we did a sketch with Jeannine Harouni for one of the online sections, before she had blown up and become like best nominee at the Fringe and she had acted with us on modern horror stories.

So we knew she was super talented and so easy to write for.

And my favorite thing in the world was we did a sketch where the ending was pitched to a big celebrity, who I can't name, who basically was like, no, I don't want my character's likeness to be used in this sketch.

And because he's big enough that even though he had no legal standing, we didn't want to piss him off.

I had to rewrite the ending to someone else's sketch in an hour.

Oh shit.

And I loved it.

That's what I want.

I love that pressure.

I love seeing like we basically were like, oh, I know this extra from the open mic circuit.

I think he's super talented.

Let's put him in the sketch.

Let's give him a line.

It'll be so much cheaper to do it that way.

And then we were able to rewrite the ending.

And that was a lot of fun.

It's what they do on Kerb, isn't it?

Just get all their friends in.

Well, and I think, you know, especially in the London scene, I think the London scene is really a hybrid between LA and New York, where you do get a lot of comics who are actors, kind of like LA and a bunch of other comics who do really, really love stand up like you do in New York.

And there's a lot of talent that you get to use and have fun with.

Now it's time for some telly talk.

I hate the adverts in the advertisements in American TV, because there's so fucking many and it makes a half hour show 21 minutes, so it's nine minutes of ads.

But when you're watching it as a streaming show, 21 minutes is quite nice, isn't it?

Well, I go both ways on this, because if I'm actually watching a bunch of, I'm a binge watcher, right?

I'm always on tour.

So like, okay, I have four hours to myself in a hotel room.

I'll just put on a bunch of episodes.

Then I need that theme song or ads.

And on Netflix, there are no ads.

Well, I need that time to be like, okay, now let me go do stuff.

In between.

In between.

Gotcha.

You know?

I don't like checking my phone while their actual show is happening.

Yeah, so you're not one of those, you're not, oh, who's that person?

Let me just...

Yeah, I have become that person more and more, but I hate that about myself.

Yeah, actually that's probably going to be an app, isn't it, that they have soon.

Where it's like, when you're watching TV, your devices will sync up and they won't let you, like one of those locked boxes, they won't let you check anything until it's over.

That would be a good idea.

The problem is, so often, I do have to be that guy and I do have to get work done while there's something going on in the background.

And again, it's just, that's why sometimes a theme song is just comforting.

It's like, oh, another episode's playing, okay, I got some time still.

Yeah.

Chill, do your admin, it'll take care of itself.

What do you think the top TV show will be on television in 2050?

In 2050?

Yeah, kind of crazy shit they're gonna be watching.

You're gonna be watching.

I think what's gonna happen is that there's gonna be a race to start self-producing TV shows for things like YouTube and Amazon because there's a lot of people who now have all the equipment they need.

They just need people who are willing to do it.

And if they have the kind of followings that they already have, they can pretty quickly make their own things for cheaper and then make all the advertising money themselves without having the middleman who now is really just providing the check upfront.

So you think TV corporations and television stations will cease to exist in some form?

Well, I think what's more likely to happen, unfortunately, is although it'll start off like that, where they will stop having as much sway.

Ultimately, rich people will just start buying up all the people doing it, making it easier for them in the short term, but ultimately just recreating these things in the long term.

Sounds horrible.

So if I had to guess, in 2050, the top TV show will be Vickie Gervais' final season of The Office.

It'll be back.

It'll be back.

It'll be back, don't it?

I'm actually starting to want something.

I don't think we even thought about this.

When do you think they're going to turn off the terrestrial television, like TV just on, like shows?

I don't think anyone's watching that.

You know, it's one of those things where they just need enough old people to be comfortable without having that to rely on, which will take, I think it'll take another 10, 15 years.

You think so?

It might all just be there anyway, because that's how the news operates.

The news has to be on all the time live, so maybe it will never technically go, maybe it will just be news.

I think also, I think news will just start becoming readily available on all streaming services.

All streaming services might be required to by government services to have one option for the news for any type of breaking news.

Yeah, I don't know where that's all got.

If we start talking about news, I'm going to get really dark, because I have intelligent friends, intelligent friends tell me that they don't watch the mainstream media.

I'm like, okay, you can't just put it all together and just call it some thing, as if they're all getting together to make this fake news to tell everybody.

There has to be facts, guys.

Well, I don't trust the BBC, because they didn't show this march that happened.

Well, maybe they didn't show that march, but it doesn't mean everything else on there is a lie.

That's what I'm scared about in the future, really.

unless we can get a handle on it soon, it's going to get a little bit fucking...

I think that's completely fair.

So my show in 2022, which is called Legally Funny, was essentially about this.

It was about the concept of, when are we going to figure out who we can listen to in going to all the categories of people that people consider themselves capable of listening to?

And that special will come out in December.

Oh, lovely.

I'll love to watch that.

I was so close to the end and I had an audio problem, but don't worry.

The question I asked him around here was something like, will that special be alongside those crazy Romanian clips from Romania's Got Talent?

My agents are so angry that those are the only clips that come up when you search my name.

They're like, it looks insane.

Sid, why did you do this?

I'm like, they want me back.

They're like, that's the opposite of what we want to hear.

Well, I think that's it, because we're out of time.

Thank you for coming on Television times.

And thank you, Sid.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me, man.

Well, that was me talking to Sid Singh at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Nice chat, I like that guy, he's fun.

Check him out online, and if you can catch him live, definitely go and see him.

He has two completely different sets.

And keep an eye for that new special he mentioned, I certainly will be.

Be sure to follow his socials, which can all be found in the show notes of this very episode.

And now to today's outro track.

Today's outro track is the opening song from We Are Animals.

I haven't put it out yet, I don't know why on any of these podcast episodes.

It's called Mechanism.

I wrote it way back in 2006.

And the reason I remember that is because me and my best friend, we had a little competition.

He too writes songs, and we both came up with the title Mechanism.

He wrote a song with the same title, as did I.

And this is my version, which I really, really like.

You know, I don't know, would you say it's anti-capitalist, maybe a little bit?

I guess that's kind of the feeling behind it.

You know, I had strong feelings about such things at the time, still do, obviously.

But yeah, this is a good song, I think.

This is called Mechanism.

It's the opening track of We Are Animals from 2006, recorded in Japan.

So that was Mechanism from the album We Are Animals, recorded in Japan in 2006.

Right, I hope you liked my chat with Sid.

Come back again next time for another episode of Television times.

But for now, thanks for listening.

See you next time.