All this month we are speaking to comedian Stuart Goldsmith. After a really successful run at this years Edinburgh Fringe, the comic is now taking his show Canary on the road, his first tour in the United Kingdom for a decade! All this month we are speaking to Stuart about the show, climate change and much more. Today, we talk about climate change and adapting it for stand up.
How did you initially get interested in climate change?
Through my own dread! Anyone who’s paying attention is interested in climate change, but there are so many reasons not to think about it; complexity, fear, how implicated we all are. It’s incredibly easy to let your thoughts slide away from it onto for example paying the rent.
I found my climate dread became overpowering and I just had to start talking about it onstage.
When did you decide to incorporate it into your stand up?
In 2022 I performed a list entitled “all the ways I think about climate change in order to try to feel OK about it”, and while the response was no more than “fine”, I felt one of those sea-change moments where a new thing opened up.
What has been the best reaction to your stand up style?
At a conference in the USA a bunch of Chief Sustainability Officers saw my stuff about business class flights emitting three times more carbon dioxide than economy class, and told me the next day they all booed the delegates who were leaving the conference via business class flights.
What about the strangest?
An older lady in Cardiff tried to shout me down because she thought Extinction Rebellion protestors were all the paid employees of George Soros.
How hard is it to write jokes focused on this topic?
Harder than most subjects, because the stakes are real and everyone in the room arrives already carrying some combination of guilt, dread, or a defensive eye-roll before you’ve said a word. The mistake I made early on was trying to cram in too much information, as if the show’s job was to teach rather than to land jokes. The version that actually works is much narrower; I try to pick one honest angle, such as my own hypocrisy, and let the audience do the rest of the thinking themselves – rather than handing them a lecture with punchlines attached.
What has been your favourite joke you have managed to write about this?
“I flew to America to speak at a climate conference. Which is bad, but it’s better than flying to America and not speaking at a climate conference, like you’ve all done.”
You also have spoken at many events about sustainability and climate change, have you taken anything away from these events to help develop content in the future?
Constantly. Workshop audiences in particular are useful, because they’re often the people making real decisions inside organisations, so they can see it all much more holistically than I can. I often need to learn the science from every angle so that I can refer to is casually without getting too heavy.
Finally what do you want people to take away from your shows when they see you?
First and foremost I want them to laugh their heads off. After that I want to give them permission to admit their own hypocrisy without it meaning they don’t care, and permission to feel something about the climate crisis without either drowning in it or shutting it out entirely.
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