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James Campbell.
British stand up comic James Campbell has one of the best jobs in the world. Speaking from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, where he’d stopped off on the way over for a series of shows, Campbell is definitely a comedian with a difference. His principal target audience ranges between the ages of five and twelve years old.
"I've always been a writer," he says of his chosen vocation,"and when I was about twenty I started to work with children with learning difficulties so I started to write silly stories, and from that I went around to primary schools telling stories. Because the stories became more tangential and funny someone then said that it wasn't storytelling, it was more stand up comedy that I was doing. So as soon as I changed the name of the show to 'Comedy 4 Kids', everybody went, 'Ooh, I haven't heard of that before, that’s fantastic!’
"I suddenly found that I had a niche, so it wasn't a deliberate thing, it just happened in an evolutionary kind of way, which I think is the best way."
Being able to make your nieces and nephews laugh is one thing, but to be gifted enough to confidently take on pint sized audiences all around the world is another. Campbell, who's a great admirer of the likes of Spike Milligan and Pixar Animation (‘Toy Story’, ‘Finding Nemo’ and ‘Monster's Inc.’), knows his task involves a lot more than just being silly.
"Their sense of humour is a lot more sophisticated than what most people give them credit for," he concurs. "I actually find that compared to an adult audience I can usually do more stuff with kids because I can stretch their imaginations further... like, if you talk to an adult about having a conversation with your dog, then they'll think that's okay, 'We'll pretend that dogs can talk'. Whereas children will just go, 'Yeah, dogs can talk.' And then they'll just go with you.
"Also children are a lot more used to sitting and listening to someone for an hour because they do it all day, and they're sober," he quips.
"Until they see the show, everybody seems to think that I must sort of dumb it down a bit but no I don't, I actually bring it up." With a large percentage of improvisation required to generate the energy his shows possess, I imagine that he's also often upstaged by his audience.
"They come up with some wonderful things, and I can usually come back at them with something better," he laughs. "My favourite one was when I was talking about eyebrows, and how I don't know what they're for. Then a six year old girl said the reason was so that bald people could remember what colour their hair used to be, which I thought was the most beautiful piece of lateral thinking I've ever heard.
"But most of the time it does depend on how much you encourage them, because if you encourage kids to jump up and scream out stupid things then they will. But because they're trained to put their hands up first, with children you can decide if you want to be heckled or not. So that's quite a handy bi-product of the educational system.
"You have to sort of keep a lid on it or they'll explode, so it's a kind of inverted skill in that way. But I don't think that I could ever have been a teacher," he later admits. "I mean, I can make the kids laugh for an hour but I don't think I could ever teach them anything."
Hmmm, possibly downgrading the greater effect he has on his biggest fans, I think out loud.
Steve Jones
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James Campbell performs ‘Comedy 4 Kids’ at the Little Theatre, Fringehub from Sun 22 Feb.
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