Chris Betts

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Friday 22nd January 2021

It feels like a good week to speak to a good-natured North American. Although while the talk in Washington is of rebuilding bridges, Canada's Chris Betts is actively causing conflicts. Sort of: his popular live-show-turned-podcast thrusts the Brit-based comic into arguments with crowds and fellow performers. It gets tasty.

"I've been doing Chris Betts Vs The Audience for three years at the Fringe and had been asked by a few people when I was going to turn it into a podcast," he explains. "I actually had a studio booked for recording the first episode, before lockdown started..."

That caused some tech conundrums, but the podcast is now going strong, with revelations bursting forth left, right and centre. These can go deep.

"My favourite moments always come in the regrets round, where the audience or comedian tells me something they regret about their life and I tell them why it's the best thing they've ever done," he says. "Sometimes it's something silly, like one woman regretted stealing a city bus as a teenager in Wales and taking it for a joy ride, and then another audience member raised his hand to say that he had also stolen a bus as a teenager in Wales. At which other show is that likely to come up?

"Sometimes, and just as rewarding, it's as serious as regretting serious drug addictions or not mending relationships before the other person passed; those topics bring out so much warmth and humanity, and sometimes even the biggest laughs."

Can't argue with that. Now let's joyride back just over a decade.

First gig?

It was on a Wednesday in December of 2010, I'm not sure which date exactly. I did a five-minute spot at the Comedy Nest open mic in Montreal. I was so nervous before going on that I thought I was going to be sick.

Luckily the MC saw how nervous I was and took me aside. He asked me about where I was from, about my family, anything but what I was about to do and managed to get me just distracted enough that when I finally went on stage I was only nervous and not throw-up-in-front-of-a-room-full-strangers petrified.

The first words I ever said on stage were 'Hi, I'm Chris Betts and this is my first time doing stand-up, which means one day you'll be able to tell your kids... nothing cause there's no way you'll remember this.' It got a laugh and I immediately forgot all of my jokes and had to run to get my notebook to remind myself of the rest of my set. Luckily they found it endearing and didn't boo me.

Favourite show, ever?

During Fringe 2019 I was doing Versus the Audience and my show Dumb But Fair back-to-back on the Blundabus every day. During one of the performances of Dumb But Fair an old Scottish woman decided she hated the show and started heckling with non-sequiturs. I tried to joke with her, I tried to reason with her, I tried straight up asking her to leave.

At one point the whole crowd turned on her and were yelling at her to leave but she was like an obstinate toddler. Then I had an epiphany. I announced "If she's not going to leave then we are! Who wants to watch this show in a parking lot?" The whole crowd cheered and followed me off the bus into a loading bay just across the path and I did the show there while they sat cross-legged.

As if to tell me I'd made the right decision, just as I finished the closing bit of the show which was about horses' sexual fetishes (which are very real and very upsetting) three horses appeared out of nowhere and walked right behind me. The whole crowd cheered and I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard.

The best part of performing live is when you get those moments that could never be repeated, and there was no repeating that show.

Worst gig?

The worst gig I've done was at a show in a suburb of Montreal. It was the first time I ever MC'd and the highlights were: aggressive drunken hecklers, one comic calling another comic's wife a cunt from the stage and then tearfully apologising before giving me back the mic, and then after the show a racist tried to attack my friend and I had to choke him until I felt the fight go out of him.

I'm proud to say I haven't had to choke anyone since.

Which one person influenced your comedy life most significantly?

An old friend, Shawn Hogan. We started at around the same time and had a similar idea of what we wanted out of our comedy even though our styles were so different. Every weekend we'd go to the early show at the Comedy Nest and then run to catch the late show at the Comedy Works. We'd sit in the back and study the headliners.

After the shows we'd go to Grumpy's Bar and talk about what we liked about an act, what we didn't and why, until three or four in the morning. We were vicious about each other's acts too. I remember I had a set where everything went just right and I was feeling great coming off stage and his first words to me when I got to the back of the room were "I bet you think that went well."

And he gave me great notes on everything I'd messed up. We kept each other honest, which can be really hard in an industry where ego can so easily take the wheel. I still sometimes send him videos of jokes and ask him to hurt my feelings.

And who's the most disagreeable person you've come across in the business?

Definitely the woman who wouldn't leave the bus. Her friends were mortified. After the crowd and I streamed out she stayed up there for another half an hour, just to prove a point. But to prove what point? And to who?

Is there one routine/gag you loved, that audiences inexplicably didn't?

The ones I want to work but don't are always silly, stupid jokes. I had this one about how disappointed I was to find out that Gus was short for Angus because I always hoped it was short for Gusbert. It's so dumb and doesn't mean anything but for some reason the name Gusbert makes me laugh every time. Audiences did not agree.

How have these lockdowns been for you, creatively and generally?

I've found it almost impossible to write stand-up without the promise of a gig to try it out at. I didn't realise how much I write jokes to a deadline. That's why the Versus podcast has been so great. Since I have no idea what the guest is going to make me argue there's no way I can prepare. There's no writing to be done, I get to just show up and play.

Any reviews, heckles or post-gig reactions stick in the mind?

My favourite post-gig feedback was from an audience member in a pub in Kent. I'd just died a full and complete death. The audience gave no quarter. They couldn't have silently hated my act more.

So I finish up, get paid and go to walk out the door, not looking forward to the half-hour walk along the shoulder of the road to a country train station to catch a local and get back home by 1am if I'm lucky, and this guy in his early thirties lightly touches my arm and says "Hey don't take it personally, it's just that around here we don't like to think."

And he patted me on the back and went back to his friends. What an incredible and disarmingly honest thing to say. I was stunned for 10 minutes and then laughed about it all the way home.

How do you feel about where your career is at, right now?

I'm close to hopeful. Like every comedian the pandemic decimated me economically and creatively but some good things have come out of it. I love doing the Versus podcast and it's brought in some new fans which is great. It's also forced me to learn how to stream shows and do video and audio editing which I'll use to make more stuff in the future.

I was really frustrated at the beginning because right before the pandemic things were going better than ever for me. I won a Leicester Comedy Festival award for Versus the Audience. I was opening for Phil Wang on tour. I was just about to record a comedy album for 800lb Gorilla Records out of Nashville (which I'll do as soon as it's safe to get everyone together again).

And having all that disappear was depressing. But I've decided that since that was the last time the world was normal there's no reason I shouldn't be able to regain that momentum once a version of normality returns.

Chris Betts Versus is available from thechrisbetts.com/versus