Why stand-up comic Daniel Sloss won’t shy away from tough topics
Dark prince of comedy Daniel Sloss is unapologetic about the tough topics he tackles, including sexual assault, suicide, religion and even death. The 28-year-old Scottish comic doesn’t think any one topic is off the table when it comes to stand-up.
He’s dressed all in black and his speech is heavily punctuated with swear words, yet the first thing comedian Daniel Sloss asks is if I know the closest shop where he can buy knitting needles. He’s not joking.
The 28-year-old Scottish comic has been labelled the Dark Prince of Comedy for his predilection to tackle topics that for many are no-go zones — sexual assault, suicide, religion and death, to name a few.
But take a peek backstage at any of his shows and chances are you’ll find Sloss casting on and counting out stitches.
What started as a drunken dare from his comic buddy Kai Humphries has morphed into a challenge to knit a Christmas jumper by year’s end.
“I love it,” he tells BW Magazine of his unlikely hobby.
“I’m furious with myself at the moment because I’ve mucked up my scarf, there’s a huge hole so I have to undo a big part of it.
“I genuinely think it will be a hobby for life for me. It’s so cathartic. I want to get to the stage where I can do what my Nan does, which is maintain eye contact while she knits, without looking down at it.”
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If you’ve seen any of Sloss’ shows (he has two streaming on Netflix) or caught him live at any of his Australian gigs (he’s been a regular here for years), you’ll know he is unapologetic about the often tough topics he tackles.
In a previous show, Dark, Sloss famously spoke about his sister Josie, who was born with cerebral palsy and died when she was seven. Sloss was eight.
But he doesn’t tell the audience she’s dead until the end, as a way of pulling the rug out from under them. It’s a move that instantly silences his audience and takes the palpable tension to 10.
He doesn’t do it because he’s a horrible person. He wants the moment to have impact, he explains, the same shock as when he found out she died.
“I drag it out because I want the audience to go through what I went through,” he says.
“My sister’s death caught me so off-guard. When Josie was born my parents were told she was not going to live past five and obviously my parents didn’t tell me that because they’re good parents. So, it was an utter shock.”
Dark comedy, not to be confused with crude, rude or shock comedy, is gathering pace around the world.
In comic terms, it’s the opposite of an easy laugh — it’s a laugh that often comes after a drawn-out tension that leaves the audience gasping for the relief of a punchline.
Australian comic Hannah Gadsby caught the world’s attention last year with her one-hour Netflix show, Nanette, in which she spoke openly and honestly about sexism and homophobia and about being the victim of sexual assault.
It’s the kind of topic you wouldn’t think has a place in comedy, that you can’t possibly expect people to laugh about these dark subjects.
Sloss becomes serious and passionate when he speaks about the importance of creating tension in comedy and how even the most devastating subjects, if handled correctly, are very much a part of the modern comedic landscape. He doesn’t think any one topic is off the table when it comes to stand-up.
“Talking about sexual assault is a minefield every day,” he says.
“When I was writing (his most recent show) X, in previews I did I would ask the women in the audience at the end of the show ‘Is there anything there that I said that was wrong?’ because the last thing I would ever want to do in talking about it is upset a survivor.
“The fact is that in every single one of my shows there will undoubtedly be a survivor.
“They were always OK with it, some of the language I’d chosen was incorrect, they told me, but I’ve had many, many survivors talk to me after my shows and I will listen. And if there was something that upset someone, I would ask why and then if I see their point I will change my delivery in some way.
“That’s not me being censored, that’s called having empathy.”
This style of comedy has impact. Sloss recounts the powerful moment a 14-year-old lesbian approached him after a show that had included a lot of pro-gay material.
She asked him if he felt the same positive way about lesbians? He hadn’t realised he had been excluding the girl by the language he’d chosen and swore from then on to always use gender-neutral terminology.
And a woman from a shelter for abused women contacted him to say she’d been showing the others his show, Jigsaw, in which he slams toxic relationships — material derived mostly from personal experience.
She told him it had empowered many of them to stay away from the dangerous relationships that had led them to the shelters.
This show and his often-hilarious diatribe on his failed relationships has attracted a tally Sloss could not have foreseen: At last count, Sloss says he is responsible for 30,000 break-ups, 70 broken engagements and 85 divorces. This, too, is no joke.
An audience member got in touch on Twitter to thank Sloss for opening her eyes to her toxic relationship.
He retweeted her post and soon after he was receiving similar messages from around the world. He has even been cited in divorce papers — photographed and sent to him as proof.
Does he feel even a tiny bit guilty?
“I’ve not broken up true love, I couldn’t,” he says philosophically.
“So no, I feel no guilt. I didn’t write the show to break couples up, I wrote it to highlight how f...ed up my life and my relationships were and how I was going to try to change it.
“But it obviously had this much bigger impact. So to the people on Twitter who say ‘Oh my God, you broke up all these people’ I say, ‘If a 28-year-old comedian can break up your relationship, it wasn’t that strong in the first place’.”
Whether you’re on board with this growing trend in comedy or not, laughing at difficult situations can be healthy, Foundation Psychology Melbourne clinical psychologist Ben Buchanan says.
“Humour is considered the most healthy defence mechanism in that it helps us connect and acknowledge things we find difficult to face,” he says.
“Using humour to tackle difficult topics is an effective way of dealing with them, if done correctly.”
Sloss agrees that he used humour “to get through life as a child” — particularly in the years after his sister’s death. From the age of about 16, he started testing his skills in stand-up and quickly fell in love with scoring laughs as a career.
“The second I did my first gig I was like ‘Bloody hell, I’m good at this’ and there were about seven people in the audience,” he says.
“I was raised with a ‘You can do anything’ attitude and I had the arrogance of youth. Don’t get me wrong, I have had some spectacular failures and I’ve bombed and even cried after gigs. But I never expected to get to this level of success.
“For me, I just wanted to make a living out of comedy because it’s my favourite thing to do, I love it. Even if I wasn’t getting paid to do it, I’d do it on the side, as a hobby.
“That, and my knitting.”
* Daniel Sloss will perform X as part of the Sydney Comedy Festival, April 27, Enmore Theatre
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