Interview with Struan Logan

Scottish comedian Struan Logan talks to us about his current show, the difficulties in being a touring comedian, and how the issues surrounding free speech are affecting comedy

Interview with Struan Logan

Can you introduce yourself to the reader?

My name is Struan Logan, unless I fall over then I’m Struan All Over the Floor. I am a Scottish stand-up comedian who travels for gigs to tell audiences better jokes than that one just there. 

What does being a comedian involve? Give us the typical outline of a day?

It involves a lot more admin than you expect. For example, if you are setting up a solo show for a fringe festival you have to set up all of that yourself. There is also a lot of emailing people to get booked on clubs or emailing people to come and see your show who could help you progress as a comedian. Then you have to spend a lot of time on planes, trains or megabuses to get to those gigs. 

As I am not a full-time professional comedian, and most of my paid gigs are international, I still spend most of the year working a day job in a very boring call centre but they let me leave any time I want to do month-long festivals with no repercussions so I can’t complain. It is an odd thing being in the part time stage as an international comic… When you are onstage you seem like a one man travelling circus that never ends but then you come home to the day job where you call random people asking them to take part in surveys. 

What led you to pursue stand-up comedy initially?

Stand-up comedy gave me my first job I really enjoyed. I travelled into Edinburgh for a job interview so I crashed at a friend’s place the night before and did this horrendous open mic night on the skankiest bar on Cowgate called Rush. Went to the job interview and we chatted about comedy which helped as it was working at Edinburgh Fringe as a flyerer. I was able to live in Edinburgh for the month of August with several passes to see any show I wanted on the fringe for free and just gorged on so many fantastic solo shows which made me realise that I didn’t just want to do stand-up but also long form stuff with structure, call backs and one single subject rather than a collection of random jokes. 

What are some of the most challenging parts about being a comedian?

Currently it is what I mentioned before of the balance between part time as an international comedian which is essentially having a cool hobby that pays me to travel and live out there but it does not help with keeping up with rent. So, in exchange I have to do a very mundane day-job. 

I have had a very good year which has gone better than I expected with great audiences and lovely reviews but this does not lead instantly to lots of money dropping out of the sky. It takes a long time to build an audience so you have to power through and hope that the foundations you have built will pay off later down the line. 

You have recently performed your show ‘Struan All Over the World’ at Brighton and Wandsworth Fringe, what do you enjoy the most from performing at Fringe festivals?

The audiences who attend are people who understand that they are there to see a show for an hour and will probably be seeing several shows that same day, so want you to bring a show that is unique to you. A lot of comedy puts pressure on you to make the jokes you tell be pleasing to the largest audience, which can feel formulaic. Since a fringe audience are comedy savvy they see through that trickery quickly and since they are with you for an hour they are willing to hear longer more adventurous parts of material in exchange for a good payoff without feeling insecure that a punchline hasn’t come by for the last 30 seconds. A lot of normal crowds are not willing to trust where the comedian is going or have the patience for a longer pay off and want to be entertained instantly. Hence a lot of comedy nights can become several sets of slightly different Tinder observations. 

What are some of the difficulties of performing in so many different countries around the world?

I don’t have much difficulty with performing internationally anymore. I understand that people will be looking at me on stage knowing that I am a Scotsman who looks the part due to my ginger beard and have a very Scottish sounding name they don’t understand. People are also interested in listening to an international voice to see what they say about their country. I love to do my research and throw in local stuff which normally only works in that country, so I have to write more. However, this means back home I have to create a different angle since I am just Scottish and some of the international material does not work. There is a joke I can tell about looking older than my age of 27 when I mention my age internationally produces shock due to my “rough face.” Here is a clip of what I mean:

When I come back here and do a gig in Glasgow they look at me and think, “...Mate! You look like a bill of good health.” 

Are there any countries you haven’t performed at yet which you’d like to?

I would like to do more European countries like Scandinavia, Finland, the Netherlands and Eastern Europe as they are not that far in reality and I do not know enough about those countries. 

I would also love to gig extensively in South East Asia like Vietnam, Indonesia and Myanmar as I know the places but never was able to set up the gigs when I was there last time. 

A number of comedians, such as Ricky Gervais, have recently spoken out about the role of free speech in comedy. How have you seen this debate affect the world of stand-up comedy?

Personally, it has not affected my own sets but the culture of the internet does make people want to have an argument about whether subjects are acceptable rather than if an idea is funny. Look at someone like Count Dankula who was given a criminal record for a Youtube clip in which he trained his pug to do a Nazi salute when he says, “Gas the Jews.” If that skit was tried out in a live comedy environment the crowd would have given it the silence it deserved, because people felt sorry for the dog. No one would have remembered that joke a week later. However, the internet craves debate so the comments and arguments meant it got more traffic giving this waste of 30-seconds the oxygen of publicity. 

This issue then got picked up by our complacent media that turned it into a two-dimensional issue, attracting it so much attention that the shit comedian was taken to court and a judge deemed the shit joke as hate speech. As you may have noticed, this neither made the internet a nicer place or stopped the issue. The people who chose to side with Count Dankula now feel authoritative figures have “taken away” their entertainment and been given a cause to follow so his crowdfunded campaign earned £200,000. If this joke had just been ignored in the first place none of the follow-up stuff would have happened.  

I feel the topic of free speech being turned by our media as a “left vs right” issue to be very dangerous. Maybe it is because I have been to several countries with strong censorship including one where police check on comedy clubs. I would much prefer someone says the worst things possible and people themselves decide that person is wrong rather than a single judge deem a joke as illegal. We do not know how privileged we are to have free speech as a thing, never mind being able to debate how much we should limit it or not. 

What’s your writing process like when creating a new show? How do you find material?

It is saying the most pretentious version of slightly funny ideas as if I’m looking to make the stand-up equivalent of The Wire. The audience don’t laugh and I redraft it over and over again to different audiences until they start laughing consistently. The only way I know I am getting better at comedy is that I have to do less redrafts. 

Here at Voice we’re constantly looking at ways the arts can inspire activism, what role do you think stand-up comedy can play in this?

Honest? I don’t think it does. There are fantastic people like Mark Thomas and Josie Long who have turned their comedy into activism and activism into comedy but they are the very rare exception. To inspire activism, people need to feel alone in the world except when they are part of that cause for their activism. Comedy by comparison is getting a group of people and making them feel part of a gathering. Biologically you come out of a show having laughed several times with your brain topped up with endorphins, not so frustrated with the injustices of the world that you need to go out and change things. I very much include myself in this problem, the closest I get is sharing the occasional article or signing a petition but that isn’t the same as getting your hands dirty. If anything, comedy ignores activism hence why so many comedies are either telling their version of the news, panel shows that are banal middle-class chat or Netflix comedies that nihilistically laughing at our pointlessness in this empty godless universe. 

I think comedy is a very good yardstick for understanding where we are as a culture and pushing ideas further forward but when it comes to the hard activism of pushing that boulder up the mountain of change the best a comic will contribute is cheering people on, point out when the rock starts rolling down the hill, and crack jokes about how it has an orange face and silly haircut.

Have you got any plans for further shows or travel opportunities lined up in the future?

I am headlining gigs in Berlin and may have another Australia/SE Asia trip in 2019 but otherwise my target is to stay more in the UK so I do not have to leave for weeks on end. 

What advice would you offer to young people interested in pursuing stand up as a career?

If you want to be a stand-up specialising in fringe festivals you want to be able to see what the world’s biggest arts festival is like. There are plenty of jobs in the city of Edinburgh over August, find one that ethically pays and experience the festival for yourself.

From there, realise what you want to do with your comedy, this can be just telling a 5-minutes story, wacky jokes or you want to make the stand-up equivalent of The Wire. Realise you are going to make a lot of mistakes and fail constantly, don’t let it get you down just keep powering through. Eventually you may have the privilege to headline a week of gigs in Singapore where your accommodation is covered and it has a pool and then spend the next week working unpaid overtime in a call centre to pay off the debts of doing the Adelaide Fringe. It’s a schizophrenic life being a travelling comedian. 

When and where can people see your show in Edinburgh?

I am doing two shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe which both are about travel, the early show is at 2:30pm at Finnegan’s Wake called Stand-Up Nomad: Backpacking Comedy which I host by buggering about with the crowd and tell stories about travels that aren’t in my solo show then I introduce three acts from differing continents. Last year Kavin Jay, a Malaysian comic came on loads during the fringe and then went off to do a Netflix special in Singapore so you never know who you’ll get. 

The other is my solo show at 6:05pm in Counting House: Attic called Struan All Over the World this show has already been to festivals in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Singapore, London and Brighton and thankfully the folk at Voice Mag enjoyed it enough to give me this interview. 

Where can people find you online?

There are three option, my website is: https://www.struanlogan.com/

Social media of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are all under the handle/username of @StruanLogan 

I also run a podcast called, What’s Your Agenda? in which I interview comics what makes them who they are on iTunes and other podcast apps: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/whats-your-agenda-with-struan-logan/id1368611461?mt=2

Header Image Credit: Tony Lewis

Author

Tom Inniss

Tom Inniss Voice Team

Tom is the Editor of Voice. He is a politics graduate and holds a masters in journalism, with particular interest in youth political engagement and technology. He is also a mentor to our Voice Contributors, and champions our festivals programme, including the reporter team at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

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