by Comedian Rob Copland is sipping a pint of Guinness as I arrive at a cozy pub near his home in south London. A fire crackles in the corner, fairy lights twinkle, and a little brown puppy named Pancake lies curled up at his feet, nibbling on a carrot.
The peaceful scene couldn’t be further from his comedy, where every performance is an explosion of energy with Copland dancing, clapping, jumping on chairs and sending the audience into hysterics. He once walked upside down across a room over a steel beam, delivering jokes as he went. He may be one of the few stand-ups to regularly suffer injuries on stage, including neck injuries from headbanging too hard during his debut show Mainstream Muck (where he created a comedy mosh pit) and toe pain from jumping around on stage.
Copland’s wild energy has been bubbling through the London comedy scene for almost a decade, but last year he made a big breakthrough. He won the Victoria Wood Prize at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for the performance that best embodies the spirit of the marginalized after his show “Gimme” (One With Everything) became a word-of-mouth sensation, with audiences lining the street, to get a seat in the cinema crowd.
“Gimme” asks important questions about a life well spent, connecting Copland’s struggle for comedic success while working as a potter in a bakery with the story of his great-uncle George, who died in World War II. The heady mix of physical comedy, existential dread and community spirit made it one of those rare shows that keeps you on the edge of your seat for hours.
I don’t see the point of doing comedy unless you try to reinvent it
“Comedians are like DJs, but because of the vibe,” Copland says. “How do I want to make people feel when I have a microphone in my hand? I want them to be hopeful, good and optimistic. I want the show to come to life.”
He always dreamed of being a charismatic rock frontman and radiates that energy. “The best feeling in the world is discovering a new band and then telling people about it,” he says. “That’s what I wanted to do with this show.”
Like his comedy hero John Kearns (whom he recently supported on tour), Copland eschewed larger, more commercialized venues in favor of the Free Fringe, which promotes “a more creative environment” – space to experiment, less pressure to conform – than the rest of the festival.
“I need comedy to be fun. That’s why we do it,” he says. “I wanted to set up shop on the outskirts of town and make so much noise that people would ask, ‘What is that?’ It can’t be a business, boring thing. I wanted it to feel like a fucking punk rock show.”
Copland’s first foray into performance also shied away from tradition. Born in Birkenhead, his father moved the family to Singapore when he was four years old for work, then returned to Southampton in time for puberty, for which he is grateful: “Because completing secondary school in England is kind of what makes you makes it English, right? Calling names on houses, drinking bottles of White Lightning in parks.”
He enjoyed performing in the classroom. He performed stunts jumping on the floor, eating gum from the underside of desks and balancing precariously on chairs. “I loved making people laugh,” he says. “Anything to get attention, to be disruptive, to interrupt the flow of the class because I didn’t want to do the class.”
Homework drove him to despair and he struggled with exams, failing his maths GCSE several times. “It was ADHD, dyslexia, just frustration of not being able to sit down and do it.” When he discovered his love of cinema, it felt like a refuge, and a media BTec with teachers who inspired him, “awakened my imagination…and learned about subtext and cinematic language, the tools used to tell stories.”
A career in directing (something he would still like to do) called and he went to university in Canterbury to study film and then worked in television production. But the rules made no sense: presenteeism and shady stars reigned. “TV is just so toxic,” he says. “This culture of being handcuffed to a desk. You can get to the top, but you won’t enjoy your life and you’ll be broken when you get there.”
The great thing about a comedian is that he does things his own way. We should all stick to our guns
Copland had an epiphany on his 25th birthday. “The feeling was: I haven’t started my life yet,” he says. “In the back of my mind I always thought, ‘I’m going to do comedy.'” He began a comedy course, knowing full well he would be forced to perform his first act. It was terrifying, but veteran standup Jeff Innocent encouraged him. He “bombed” big time in his second performance, but continued: “My talent had to keep up with my desire.”
He started figuring out who should be on stage. He loved Kearns, James Acaster, Jordan Brookes, Rory Scovel; People who he felt were doing something unique. “I’ve always said, ‘I don’t see the point of doing comedy unless you try to reinvent it,'” Copland says, grimacing. “But I really believe that.” When he saw Brookes perform “Body of Work,” “I left that room a different person because I realized that comedy can be anything, you can do whatever the hell you want want.”
Copland’s style was instinctively physical and powerful. “I have ADHD, I’m fast and loud on stage, that’s just the way my fireworks go off,” he says. “My first year of standup taught me how not to scare people.” Sometimes he would start with a Western drawl, hiding his tattoos under costumes that are “hard to place in time” — these days one shirt, one Tie and a burgundy jacket available only to members. “I remember being obsessed with how people would perceive me,” he says. “I wanted a blank canvas.” As his comedy developed, his shows moved more and more into vulnerability. In Mainstream Muck he examined failures at school and in the workplace and feared that this pattern would be repeated in comedy. But he told a fanciful backstory: “I was really afraid of being seen.”
In “Gimme,” with the help of director Ben Target, he dared to be honest about his actual job as a pot washer and the struggle for success. “I realized I was hiding. “I remember saying to Ben, ‘I want to be seen.’ Because it’s wonderful when you can connect with a comedian,” he says. “It feels like you’re peeling back those layers of fear until you’re able to find yourself.”
His shows always include moments of community where the audience becomes immersed in the performance. He got people moshing with him and lifting him up to touch an unreachable star. During Gimme, the audience lights up the stage and forms a human pyramid. “I wanted show “I tell them what I want to say,” he says. “Let’s have a live experience together.”
Copland also takes the audience into the sink of his bakery. He actually loves the job, he feels “grounded” and can pay his bills, which gives him the mental space to focus on comedy. At the same time: “I think about my dreams most when I’m sitting at the sink. So many people have a job that isn’t the job they want.”
Related: “Maybe everyone feels socially awkward”: The stand-ups are turning autism into a comedy superpower
Copland believes artists are often pushed down the same well-trodden path. “The great thing about a comedian is that he does things his own way. We should all stick to our guns.” He owes his secondary victory to this determination. When his agent revealed the news, he was with his family and his wife Una. “It was really emotional, I was overjoyed,” he says. When he was a child his mother had taken him to see Victoria Wood, it felt like a “full circle moment”.
He’s now touring and looking for ideas for television, but the prize money has changed his and Una’s lives in other ways: “I got to get the puppy Pancake and that makes me very, very happy.”
Still, the success sparked fears that he will explore in his next live show: the tension between “artistic fulfillment or financial fulfillment” and the worry that too much of what you love can bring suffering. “I try so hard on stage that I drive myself into the ground. I destroy my body doing comedy,” he says. “Enjoying something so much that you ruin it – that’s what interests me so much.”
Despite the physical strain, Copland is determined to keep pushing himself and keep doing things his way. “I don’t want to be famous, I want to be good at what I do,” he says. “I just want to do cool stuff, man.”
Rob Coplands Galways (one With Everything) Tours from February 7th to June 4th; The tour begins at Duffy’s Bar, Leicester.
