Chuckling Under Pressure
From humble beginnings Canadian comic Craig Campbell has gone on to become one of the most respected pros in the business. He talks about taking the long route to success, touring deepest Asia and ringing in the new year with Jim Carrey.
Paul Nolan, 12 Oct 2011
We join Canadian comic Craig Campbell in his adopted home of Devon, where he has some notable neighbours. “We’re a stone’s throw from Joss Stone’s house,” he reveals. “It’s a very artistic area in little subtle ways. Musicians of course are a component of that, but there’s a lot of pottery, as well as artists, painters and arts and crafts people.”
Campbell himself first relocated to London from Canada several years ago in order to take advantage of the city’s vibrant comedy scene, and then moved to Devon after meeting his partner at Glastonbury. His stand-up career has really taken off in the past few years, thanks to appearances on Russell Howard’s Good News and the enormously influential Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Road Show.
In contrast to his stand-up persona – which is that of a bloke-ish, in-your-face Canadian ready to seize on the comic differences between nationalities – Campbell is soft-spoken in person. Nonetheless, his aggressively hyper stage act has found a welcome audience amongst stand-up fans internationally.
“In little ways, I suppose things have been kicking off in recent years,” considers Campbell. “You rarely sit and reflect and try to quantify things like that. Especially for someone like me, who started out in 1989, you don’t really look at the goal posts along the way to try and figure out how you’re doing. I’m certainly doing different shows now, and they’re under my own steam, so that’s kind of nice. There’s adjustments along the way of course, because when you’re doing ensemble shows, they’re with your mates, and that’s pretty exciting when you’re in foreign locales and so on.
“But right now, doing my own shows, I’ve got the motorbike all packed up for the trip to Ireland, and before that, I’m in Port William, then it’s another three shows up in the Highlands, and over to Aberdeen, the Shetlands and on again. These are quite, not arduous, but a lot more effort than you would put into a weekend for example. And in that way, it actually reminds me of doing stand-up in Canada, when I would go on the road for six to eight weeks at a time, and get back to my house and feel like it was just another hotel room.”
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