At the time of recording, King Shan was just ten gigs in to his stand up career. What made the award winning filmmaker take up stand up comedy? 

PODCASTTRANSCRIPTKEYWORDS
origin stories, stand-up journey, Bollywood films, stage fright, marketing degree, drama society, film producing, short films, COVID impact, personal struggles, comedy course, open mics, novice comedian, audience response, future shows

Welcome back to On the Mic: Origin Stories. I’m Martin Walker.

So, people do sometimes ask, what is it with you and origin stories? Truth is, I’ve been around comedy for a long time. I’ve gotten to know comedians before they were famous. I recall chatting to Bridget Christie when she was still a journalist, playing to tiny little rooms. I remember seeing Susan Cameron for the first time doing a new act show at The Stand in Edinburgh. A very early interview I did was with Paul Sinha, his first Edinburgh show in a little hut, long before he became a household name, and it was great to talk to him again just a couple of weeks ago on the publication of his memoir. Everybody has an origin story. And if you’re talented, if you work hard, and if you’re lucky, you can make it. King Shan is at the start of his stand up journey. This is his origin story.

I grew up watching Bollywood films and it’s kind of like I was crazy about wanting to do the whole song and dance thing, but obviously that never happened. I grew up and realized to be a bit more realistic, because that’s not really what I’m into as much. So I started performing as an actor on stage. This is such a long time ago, but as a teenager… and my first show was Grease, which was ironic, because I can’t sing on stage, even to this day, that’s probably the only time I have stage fright still, because I forget the words. So one time, I forget the words completely, even if I knew what, know what the song is. And not only that, I was cast as Putzie, so a brown man cast as probably the whitest character on the show. But I made it my own, and I got a really good response. You know, everyone enjoyed it, comic timing and everything. And I realized that, yeah, I should be doing this. So, you know, did a few more shows. Obviously, I did my A level dramas, and I carried on. But I when I went to uni, I decided to do what most South Asians do, and study for a degree that I probably didn’t care about. And so I did a marketing degree, but I joined, I joined the drama society. And by default, by my final year, I was the President of it, because the President left her post, which meant I took over. We never really got to do a show, but it was a good time, you know, getting to do bits and pieces in front of everyone, like the members of the society.

Then I went, it seems like I’m going through a list of things, but then I went and did a Master’s in Film Producing at the University of Glamorgan. And I made my first Short for the first time, and even though the experience itself with the director was horrendous, it still ended up going… it was part of the Olympics in 2012 and I got second prize, which I was really happy about.

But hadn’t been performing for a while at that point. So I decided, You know what, I’m going to start writing my own stuff, making my own stuff. So I made a few shorts, even attempted to make a feature about 11 years ago, which was disastrous, because A) I wasn’t ready. And B) I had the misfortune of working with probably some of the worst cast and crew, you can possibly imagine. So I had that double whammy to worry about. So I kind of didn’t want to do any more of this stuff, but I carried on. My best friend I met on set of that film. And then fast forward a few years, you know, we made a few shorts here and there. Obviously COVID hit, so we made a short on Zoom, completely using Zoom, nothing else. We won about 100 awards. I don’t know how that happened, but it happened, but, and I was quite chuffed as well. But really, I, I wanted to stand up for a long, long time. But I always, I was always, it was the fear. Because, as an actor, if you’re on stage, you know, you’ve got other people, if you if you screw up, they can, like, just jump in, or you can jump in and, you know, try and save the scene. And as a film set, obviously, you get as many takes as needed, provided you can do schedule, but with stand up comedy that’s not the case. It’s just you and you alone. So the pressure was there and the fear was there, but personal stuff kind of pushed me towards losing a lot of the fear.

You know, I had family problems where, you know, my father ended up cheating on my mother on a massive scale. You know, he ended up, I mean, they’re still married legally, but you still ended up going and, you know, getting, I say, married, but to a woman who’s, like, younger than my brother, you know she’s about, she’s about in her mid 20s now, and he’s like in the mid 50s. But it was an illegal marriage, and as what I the more I found out about my father not being who he was, the less I became afraid. And then obviously I had my ex as well, who I call, literally called the devil, because she just wanted me for the visa and, you know, money and things like that, and that kind of obviously made me for spiraling out of control, because I thought was good enough to do things. There’s such a depressing episode on this podcast, isn’t there? Someone’s gonna be listening to me like I didn’t sign up for this…

But, um, but obviously, then I had my mother and my sister and the woman in my life, you know, rally behind me and tell me that. You know, no, this is, this isn’t on you for her being her being like that. This is on you for your father being like that. But I finally decided to push to actually give it a go. It happened by accident, sort of, but it was also when I actually, it’s gonna be cliche, but it’s when I met a girl… I’m not with her, but, you know, she kind of just, like, made me want to, you know, decide, you know what this is, the type of guy she would probably want to be with, the guy who’s actually going to do the things that he wants to do, rather than just, you know, give It chicken shit and just sit in the corner.

So I came across Ultra Comedy. I can’t remember how. It was like an eight-week course that you do with a comedian. So we had Will Duggan, who’d been doing it for quite a few years. And he taught us, you know, for about eight weeks how to, you know, write jokes. And it was that point you realized that, yeah, anyone can really tell a joke in a pub and stuff, but actually, there is a structure to it, you know, it can be taught, because a lot of people think that just comes naturally. It can be taught. And that’s what we did. We got taught. I had my first show, you know, we I raised for Medical Aid for Palestinians. That was a charity I chose, and I didn’t want to look back. After that, I decided, you know, it wasn’t such a bad performance, because, you know, people did laugh. And then so I started hitting up open mics, and I haven’t done that many, because this is where I got a bit of surreal for me coming on this podcast, because I’ve listened to a few of your episodes. And I was like, these people have done stuff, whereas I’ve only just finished my tenth gig… on Sunday. It was fantastic. I’ve got to do some poetry for the first time. Well, good poetry for the first time in about decade. And I just want to keep on carrying on to do more shows. I’ve got more shows lined up. Got more open mics lined up. I’ve had bad gigs already. Obviously, that’s part of the part of the process of anything. But one thing I’ve realized is that I haven’t had a room full of people that have been dead silent that my jokes throughout the entire thing, you know, so it’s been a case of more of that half my stuff, was like, laugh out loud, funny, and then the other half, yes, it did get a bit, it did get silent, but it wasn’t that it was silent throughout the whole thing. I mean, that may not sound like a big thing, but you know, as a novice comedian, it just feels like, you know, at least they didn’t leave crying. I suppose you could say, you know, unless it was in laughter, but you know, so I’m just trying to, obviously still hone my craft. I’ve got quite a few more for open mics coming up, depends, before I decide I’ve had enough and listen to my own voice, I tend to yap on.

Well, I wish you all the best, King Shan. I urge all the listeners to check out your stuff. Thanks for your time.

It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

If you’d like to check out some of King Shan’s stuff or find out where he’s performing next go to his profile page.

King Shan’s Profile HERE

And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a nice review. Like and Subscribe. It really helps. I’m Martin Walker, see you next time.

ULTA COMEDY HERE