Kurt Braunohler Quotes

Doing stand-up takes the fun out of being funny.

I'm definitely guilty of thinking something is funny but thinking the audience won't. Then three years later I will finally try it and it'll kill them. I got to give them more credit.

I used to never feel pressure to be creative; it's always just been a fun thing. And then suddenly, it's my job, and people are asking, 'Where's the record?'

I think, ultimately, the problem with something like this is that you actually have so many more opportunities to say something than you actually have things worth saying. And then, as an artist who doesn't want to do bad work, gosh, how do you fill up all that space when you really don't have anything actually worthwhile to say? And that's what makes the job tough, because the fans get mad - "That's not funny," or "You've been sucking for several months now." And you go, "It's not my fault! I'm trying."

When I do an hour-and-a-half show, if I don't improvise 20 minutes worth of new material each night, I feel I've let myself down.

It's weird because standup can be like therapy. Comedians can't be satisfied with just having fun with our friends. We've got to figure out a way to do it on stage.

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

When I was doing stand-up, I was about twenty, and I really think that that's a little too young. I didn't have a whole lot of life experience to draw on.

Writing comedy is an exposing thing because you're putting yourself on the line with every joke you write, and although you can't second-guess an audience, if you want to be successful, you have to write stuff people like.

Music has become a bigger business, and with that there is more pressure to succeed; I think that it creates a negative pressure for being creative.

When I began doing stand-up, it took me a long time to get an hour's worth of material together.

I think the challenge is going out in front of a paying audience with absolutely nothing and trying to entertain them for two hours. Thankfully, I only think about that right before we go on, and then once we're out there, everything's fine.

Bad improv happens with people who are inexperienced with each other and don't know the craft that well. But bad stand-up is something that could happen to someone at any level in their career.

The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.

I think one of the reasons all the comics I worked with dropped off the log so early, and a lot of them did - Tony Hancock, Frankie, Sid James, it's dreadful really - was the stress. You can only be as good or better than the last show, and there's the permanent aggro of hoping you get the right writers and the right material.

People who want to do stand-up from the start - I mean that's an extremely self-centred thing to want, isn't it?

Impressions are still kind of hard for me and not what I love to do the most, but with characters, I think there's an element of fearlessness. You try to figure out the best reading and wording of the jokes before the show, and then you just really have to go hard.

Like, your body has to get used to being in front of people. Like - and you have to be like - you have to be kind of a ham, you know? Like, the thing about writers is they're generally self - comedy writers - self-loathing, sort of play small. And as a, like, performer, you have to think like a comedy writer but act like a performer.

Sometimes there were certain things in 'Limmy's Show' where I'd be having to come up with six episodes and as a result there was stuff in there that wasn't my favourite and I'd think, 'ach I'll shove that in this episode.'

The hardest part of comedy is writing the jokes, and the second-hardest part is telling the jokes. To me, everything else is significantly easier.

I'm not making comedy albums. That's too much effort for one joke.

Before I started doing standup, I knew that I had what it takes to develop an act. I went down to clubs with not many people there, and I just worked on it, man. A lot of my friends are comedians, so that part had a lot of encouragement, even though the shows were very caveman-like.

I loved the idea that I could write a joke and someone else would have to take the risk of performing it.

When the news is slow, or when there's just so many other responsibilities bearing down on me that I don't have the time to do it right, that's when it gets frustrating. As an artist, you just don't wanna put bad work out. So when you have to do it seven days a week, you're just gonna have some bad days and bad weeks and bad months and bad years.