433 - Jonny Pelham
The Comedian's Comedian Podcast
Stuart Goldsmith
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 July 2023
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Trigger warning: Discussion of child sexual abuse.
Jonny Pelham has become one of the most disarmingly hilarious comics in the UK by building his punchlines on a bedrock of unflinching honesty. There’s a big difference between the comedy cliche of “saying the unsayable”, and being able to find the humanity and authenticity in a subject that people don’t want to talk about.
We talk about his new Edinburgh Fringe show “Optimism Over Despair”, and he leads us through the experience at that show’s core: his reflections over using his set on Live At The Apollo to discuss the sexual abuse he experienced as a child. We also learn about his clinical “maladaptive daydreaming”, and what it’s like to always come with a trigger warning.
20mins of *double trigger-warning* extras available exclusively to the Insiders Club include Jonny on a joke that he’s always found too dark to make work, but which says something very important about his experiences; how he makes the personal political; and how to make biographical work what you want it to be in the face of algorithmic soup!
Go to www.comedianscomedian.com/insiders for ad-free episodes, extra content from every show that has it, and much more - including exclusive Insiders Q&As plus the incredible “self-help for comedians” special with Amanda Donnet.
Catch up with Jonny:
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/jonny-pelham-optimism-over-despair
TW/IG: @jonny_pelham
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello Stu here just popping in before the show starts to let you know that my comedy special |
| 0:04.2 | I need you alive is now available at Stuart Goldsmith dot com |
| 0:08.1 | There's a link there where you can watch it on an breathtaking array of places for the rest of the month |
| 0:13.2 | Including the 800 pound gorilla website Amazon Prime in the UK and US X-Box |
| 0:17.8 | God knows how they do that as well as loads of other links to catch it on audio go to Stuart Goldsmith dot com and |
| 0:23.6 | Watch this show that I am staggeringly proud of and do watch it if you can because it's very pretty |
| 0:30.0 | Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Stuart Goldsmith today. I am talking to Johnny Pellum who is I mean he's just |
| 0:52.2 | He's just brilliant. I love him. I love him. He is what have I said in the show notes? |
| 0:56.2 | He's disarmingly hilarious and this is this is a good point for those of you that don't read the show notes |
| 1:00.6 | This has been using the show notes as a script. There is a big difference between |
| 1:04.3 | What we think of as what I think of as leather jacket comedians saying the unsayable and actually being able to find the |
| 1:11.3 | Humanity and the authenticity in a subject that people don't want to talk about |
| 1:15.1 | We're gonna talk about Johnny's new Edinburgh Fringe show optimism over despair |
| 1:19.1 | And he's gonna talk to us about the experience at the core of that show which what which is sort of his reflections |
| 1:25.7 | over using his set on live at the Apollo to discuss the sexual abuse that he experienced as a child |
| 1:31.3 | So this episode comes with a colossal trigger warning |
| 1:35.4 | There will be discussion of child sexual abuse that Johnny suffered and that he manages to talk about on stage in an |
| 1:43.5 | Incredibly candid and disarming and frank kind of a way and make it funny. He is I mean, it's genuinely |
| 1:52.5 | Pretty breathtaking. I'm not gonna say it's moving. It is moving, but that isn't the point of it |
| 1:57.8 | It's just astonishing to see someone |
| 2:00.5 | take such a horrible experience and be able to |
| 2:05.8 | unearth |
... |
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