Tell us about your style of comedy.
My style is quite narrative – I tend to start with an actual event that has happened to me, and work from there. This also tends to mean my tone is quite warm. I always start from the basis of ‘how would I tell a funny story to my mates?’, and then add extra jokes afterwards.
There is often a core of anger in my writing, but I’ve been influenced a lot by great comedians like John Finnemore and Victoria Wood, so I like a good dose of absurdism to balance it out.
How did you get into comedy?
It was a combination of two things. A few years ago, I was booked to speak about queer experience. I realised that I didn’t have any ground-breaking insights for my talk, so I just stuffed it full of jokes and hoped the audience wouldn’t mind. A couple of people told me I should try stand-up, and that sat in the back of my brain for a couple of years.
But stand-up wasn’t where I started with comedy. I grew up listening to radio comedies like Old Harry’s Game, Bleak Expectations, and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Originally, I was writing loads of radio scripts for competitions.
However, radio comedy is a pretty closed shop to break into, and whilst I’ve had a couple of scripts produced, I still have about 60-plus scripts sitting in the vault, which have never been seen (but I’d like to do something with at some point). It got a bit disheartening, writing stuff that wasn’t seeing the light of day. So I thought I’d try taking a 5-minute set to a local open mic, and one of the other performers referred me onto Bradford Fringe.
From there, I’ve continued making friends and visiting different nights across the North, and my sets have definitely got better!
What is your favourite joke you’ve ever been told?
This is a hard one, and it’s not a single joke, but this sketch from Victoria Wood, which is just a perfect send-up of every home programme that’s ever existed.
What is the best piece of comedy advice you have ever been given?
That your best asset is yourself. I think it’s super tempting, particularly when you’re new, to look at your favourite comics and try and emulate them, but your greatest strength is developing a style that makes you you. It feels more authentic, and honestly, it’s much funnier.
When I originally started doing gigs, I realised that my style was different to a lot of comedians I was seeing. I don’t tend to swear loads, or get super crude. Whilst those things can be really funny, they don’t work with my personality or the way I write. It comes off a bit jarring.
Instead, I focused on developing my narrative style and a voice that I was comfortable with, and learning my stories as I would a script, so it flows together, and that’s got me loads of good feedback!
Who is your favourite comedian we’ve never heard of?
I saw Hadfield and Swan, a musical comedy duo, a few years ago at the Yorkshire Fringe Best New Comedian Awards, and they were absolutely brilliant. I think musical comedy is really hard to do well, especially without it feeling very dated or forced, but they’re fantastic writers and performers, with some great wordplay!
What challenges have you faced working in comedy?
I love stand-up because it can be really accessible in some ways, Unlike a lot of artistic things, you don’t need lots of equipment or lessons, you don’t need to win a competition, you can just turn up to an open mic and give it a try.
But that doesn’t mean it’s free – comedy is a really expensive hobby, especially if you’re reliant on public transport. I think I’ve only made money on 6 gigs in 2 years. Especially when you’re new, there are gigs that offer spots, but they tend to be completely unpaid, and you often have to take them to get practice and get your name on the list for next time.
And comedy isn’t just performance time, it’s the hours you spend writing and practicing your set, meaning that it tends to favour those who have well-paying, salaried jobs with regular hours that mean that they can plan and set aside that time. I’ve been really lucky to have a steady job for a few years now, but there’s still no way that I could ever afford to go to the Edinburgh Fringe to try and get noticed.
That reliance on comedians to plow in dozens of hours of unpaid time and large sums of money at the start definitely skews the demographic of performers at comedy nights, and shuts huge amounts of people out.
Added to that, I would say that the lack of local comedy nights up north can be really difficult. I’ve had quite a few people say that you have to be in London to have a chance in comedy, or that you have to go to the Fringe every year. That shouldn’t have to be the case.
There’s no reason that the north can’t have just as good a comedy scene as London, but supporting your local comedy nights is essential. York, where I’m from, doesn’t have loads of nights, but the numbers are growing. Local events like Dodgy Comedy or Complete Joke (both great nights) mean that I don’t have to incur costs to perform, and balance out the gigs that do.
How do you think that comedy as an industry can better address these issues?
There has to be a better culture of paying people from the start, even if it’s just a tenner to help cover travel – particularly for venues where they’re charging the audience for tickets, but expecting the comedians to provide the entertainment for free. I think there’s an idea that you should be taking on a certain amount of unpaid gigs to pay your dues, or that you should want to do it ‘for the passion’. That’s got to change.
I would also like to see more venues up north running comedy nights, and really ramping up the interest in them, so that people don’t feel like they have to go down south to further their careers. That culture starts locally. I would love to see more venues running nights that welcome everyone, and help create really good, supportive networks for comics in the north.
What do you hope people take away from your shows?
A good time? I don’t necessarily set out to change anyone’s mind on things drastically, but if I can give them a good laugh and let them feel I’m a nice person, then I’m satisfied with that.
What advice do you have for anyone hoping to get into comedy?
Don’t do what I did, and consider it for 4 years. Just have a go and see whether you enjoy it, and if you do, keep doing it.
I’ve also found scripting my sets – writing them long-form and learning them by heart (often whilst doing the washing up) – really helpful in terms of cutting down my nerves and not getting lost in the middle of a set.
Finally, it’s completely normal to get on-stage and be so scared that you can’t feel your legs anymore.
Saeth is performing at Blizzard Comedy’s 5th Birthday show at Gullivers on Thursday 18th April.
To keep up with more of their work, you can follow Saeth on Twitter and Instagram.
