Lewis Schaffer - Still Free Until Famous interview

Lewis Schaffer has performed his shows an estimated 4,000 times over the past 20 years. He's won a Malcolm Hardee Award, gained mostly excellent reviews and hosts his own radio show. But fame still eludes him. Or is it the other way around?

In September Stewart Lee asked Lewis to appear at Resofit, a benefit for Resonance 104.4FM. The show also featured Rob Newman, Simon Amstell and Shazia Mirza. You can see Lewis's performance on YouTube. He's on good form, and well received. However, as is typical for Lewis (who's been said to 'snatch defeat from the jaws of victory' on a regular basis), the recording cuts him off in his prime as the battery runs out.

Time Out say of his shows: "He can love you and insult you in the same sentence." I'd take it slightly further and say that attending one is like being jabbed at repeatedly with a sharp stick while he asks you if you love him.

Lewis says of himself: "I'm not nice enough to be nice, or nasty enough to be nasty." He'd probably never add this bit himself (being extremely self-critical at times), but he is 'funny enough to be funny'.

The majority of his reviewers agree: "I love Lewis Schaffer! I love his pugnacious, in-your-face delivery. His total indifference to all things British is brilliant." (Kate Copstick). To slightly offset the plentiful 4 and 5 star reviews, it's not unusual for him to have a walkout or two and he gets a steady trickle of one star ratings as well, like this one via Trip Advisor: "...at least it was free an [sic] no money was wasted."

There are few middle ground responses. People seem to be either won over by his charm, jibes and jukebox style repertoire, or remain unimpressed by his sometimes controversial material and seemingly shambolic approach. He's not averse to heading down a comedy dead end and lingering there awhile or commenting on how badly it's all going, despite the amount of laughter in the room.

Typically for Lewis we don't get to have a nice cosy chat about his show. It's more a battle of wills (mostly his own) as we're stood outside the venue and he welcomes in the audience. This is when that American charm offensive of his is in full flow. He's soon on great terms with people he's never met before, generating lots of laughs early on and showing an impressive knowledge of pretty much anywhere they might originate from. This being London, that's all over.

Lewis is a visitor too, originally from New York. He worked as a salesman, estate agent and field auditor before finally giving comedy a go at the not-so-young age of 36. Barry Katz in his podcast describes Lewis around that time as looking like "Herb from accounting, if he maybe was a child molester". However, John Fleming's blog suggests he's actually an English actor, so maybe make that "Brian from accounting". As well as performing, he was also compèring shows, introducing future stars Dave Chappelle and Louis CK amongst others.

He moved here seven years later, when he met and married his now-ex wife, whom he credits for jokes such as: "Why did the chicken cross the road? To avoid paying child support."

Lewis has performed in Edinburgh for the past six years, receiving a Malcolm Hardee Award for Best Publicity Stunt in 2009, and a nomination the following year from them for Most Original Show. Not that it makes him happy of course - he just demands to know what he's done wrong since then.

He tends to organise his own gigs in London rather than wait for the phone to ring. Sundays he has a ticketed show in Leicester Square Theatre. Monday is his radio show for Resonance FM. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the free shows at the Source Below, where I meet him and where he's had a run of over 400 so far. By 'free', of course, it means the audience can choose how much to contribute or not afterwards.

The London gigs are fairly intimate affairs. In his time he's performed his sets to a range of crowds from a single audience member to a couple of thousand. There's very little barrier between him and the audience. After the pre-show chats and informal start, he's quite happy to sit amongst them at times and once took everyone around the corner to a Lebanese restaurant when there was a problem with the venue. It gives a much more relaxed and friendly feel to the show, which, more often than not, allows him to get away with his more shocking comments later.

Unfortunately, some people only know him through the controversy that heads his way on a regular basis. His material is often provocative and he won't stop offending as he's not interested in compromise. In most cases it helps if you watch his whole show to put the jokes into perspective. By the end, the person who comes off worst is generally himself. If all you'd heard was, as one woman put it, "an excerpt from Twitter", then you probably wouldn't get where he's coming from. But that's not to say he doesn't mean what he says, or have strong opinions on just about everything.

I try to cram a few questions in here and there as he touts for business and gives directions to passers-by.

Is this the salesman in you coming out?

"No they'd be coming anyway. I'd just be backstage, bored, otherwise. I'm funnier out here than I am inside."

He greets the first couple to arrive, teasing the man about their shared Jewish roots.

What's been your greatest moment in comedy so far?

"The first time I went on stage because it took so long. I'd always wanted to be a comedian and was finally goaded into it by a friend, Doug Schoninger in New York, a place called Flannery's."

How was your performance?

"It didn't go well as I didn't have any jokes prepared. I thought you just went on stage and spoke. That's how naive I was. There were comedians out there who really studied comedy and listened to every comedy album. I didn't even know what a joke was."

Who did you admire at that time?

"I didn't have role models as such, but I liked 'insult' comics, which is what I do.
People like Don Rickles, Sam Kinison and Al Lubel."

Do you enjoy performing?

"I have to pretend I like it."

But if you really don't, why keep at it?

"This is what I do... OK, sometimes I enjoy it. I have moments. But sometimes I'm sitting there thinking I want to go home."

Have you written in other formats?

"I did a blog every day for six months, and then I said something and Twitter exploded against me."

You seem to have a knack for that.

"I do, but in person I think it's easier to see that I don't mean evil."

Would you make any compromises for fame?

"No and I never have. It would take the fun out of it. There's no audience tonight - it's because of the football."

We're meeting on a day England are playing. I wonder, why do men like football?

"Because women don't like it."

Fair enough. Regarding the fame though, you do sometimes shoot yourself in the foot.

"That's the anti-compromise, and maybe my act is shooting myself in the foot. That's what people come to see."

Is there a difference between the free shows here and the ticketed ones in Leicester Square?

"I do approach them differently. I think if people have paid up front they deserve a better show, more sophisticated, more organised. They need to get their money's worth."

So here, you can experiment more?

"Yes. But having said that's how I do approach it, I do the same shit show at the Leicester Square Theatre as I do here, but it's more shit because people have paid ten quid. So it's more of a collapse, more of a disappointment."

Lewis has been hosting his own show, Nunhead American Radio for four years on Resonance FM (described by The Guardian as "the best radio station in London"). A random selection of his guests include a local band, Tim Key, an American woman he bumped into in a Nunhead supermarket and someone giving tours of the local cemetery. It's a fun mixture of chat, song, local news and silliness. You can download the show as a podcast.

I asked how he got involved. "A comedian called Steve Parry called me up and then recommended me. At that stage I didn't know Resonance FM was this super cool arts station. I pretty much ask anyone I know to come on the show. Richard Herring, Stewart Lee... It's good fun."

How does it compare with stand-up?

"It's much easier than stand-up. You don't know if anyone is listening. You're just talking in a room with, maybe six or seven people, having a laugh. So it's like being at a party."

You gave away Brendon Burns and Richard Herring DVDs in Edinburgh last August. Would you like to make your own?

"Yes. No. I don't know. You've seen my show. It's chaos. How do you film chaos? It needs someone creative to make sense of it."

Filmmaker Jonathan Schwab recently produced the following short film about Lewis, which as a piece of art is interesting but tends to focus solely on his melancholy side. Or as Lewis describes it, "The film makes me look fat, sweaty, and small time. In other words, it is realistic."

What it leaves out is the opposing balance, the mischievous glint in his eye, the rapport with the audience and the succession of jokes hitting their targets night after night.

As the audience leave tonight, smiling and thanking him, I'd say he's come full circle. He still gives the impression of having just turned up to say whatever funny stuff comes into his head. But the difference now is that it's become a conscious decision not to take the slick, polished approach and that he's worked hard to perfect his own style. Plus of course he's learnt what a joke is and has plenty of them to choose from. No doubt he'll still upset some people along the way but his shows are always entertaining.

"Was I funny?" he asks me afterwards - even after twenty years, not seeming to accept that laughter in the right places is a good barometer of a show.

Yes, Lewis. You were funny.

For details of Lewis Schaffer's shows and podcasts visit: www.lewisschaffer.co.uk