Award-winning comic Stuart Goldsmith chats about his hit show, Canary which rolls into Birmingham this month and how he manages to squeeze the laughs out of climate change

Picture by Matt Crockett

As comedy goes, climate change doesn’t feel like a crowd pleaser but somehow Stuart Goldsmith has managed to pull it off. He admits it’s a challenge: “Writing comedy about climate is way harder than a lot of other subjects, because the stakes are real and everyone in the room arrives already carrying some guilt, dread or a defensive eye roll before I’ve opened my mouth!”
Stuart says his early mistake was to try to cram in too much detail so that he was almost teaching rather than entertaining. He’s adopted a ‘funny first’ rule that means Canary is wall-to-wall laughs with not too much information.

FIERCE JOY

There is a serious message among the lols though and Stuart says: “It is a genuine attempt to say something meaningful about turning your climate anxiety into something positive and powerful and it’s also a reminder that the fossil fuel companies would love us to fret over and compare our carbon footprints while they get on with trying to convince us that the science isn’t settled so they can keep making billions.” He adds: “It’s non-judgmental and I’m always making fun of my own attempts to change, and my own hypocrisy, first and foremost.”
Stuart has spent a lot of time and energy learning how to get people on board with something complicated, frightening and apparently a long way off. He says: “As Britain is smashed by one heatwave after another, that’s getting a little easier!” Stuart has had a couple of walkouts as well as a bit of push back from a granny on Facebook who was convinced that Extinction Rebellion were actors paid by the deep state.

He says: “Most of the time people are relieved to hear someone dragging our secret fears into the light and trying to inspire some fierce joy.” Having said that, Stuart did upset a well-known wildlife presenter when he made a technical inaccuracy about a polar bear during one of his shows…
Stuart’s aim is to give people permission to feel hope and ahead of his stint at Edinburgh in August he said that he wanted to smash the festival so hard that, “it gets back to Elon Musk and convinces him that not only is fixing our perfectly good planet much easier than terraforming Mars, but also that if he helps fix the climate people might overlook all the deaths he’s definitely caused”.

COMEDIAN’S COMEDIAN

Stuart’s previous climate comedy show, Spoilers won the Best Show award at the 2023 Leicester Comedy Festival which he says was ‘huge’ for him. It was also one of the best-reviewed shows at the Edinburgh Fringe that year where he played to sell-out audiences and received wide critical acclaim. He’s also just got back from San Francisco where he delivered a TED Talk.

As well as stand up and speaking engagements, Stuart’s internationally renowned Comedian’s Comedian podcast celebrated its 500th episode this year and has more than 30 million downloads where he’s met and interviewed many household names, some that have inspired him. He says: “I’ve hosted The Comedian’s Comedian for 14 years interviewing comics in depth about their craft. I’ve had long conversations with people like Maria Bamford, Gary Gulman and Tig Notaro about how they turn difficult personal material into something an audience can receive, and that’s fed directly into how I approach climate.”

In terms of the fellow comedians Stuart looks up to he says: “When I was younger it was Bill Hicks then I got suspicious of the prophet-on-a-hill stance and moved toward comedians who are more interested in doubt than certainty. I love Richard Pryor’s rawness and Stewart Lee’s structural ambition, and Josie Long proved you can be openly political without being a bore about it.”

EARLY DAYS

Stuart grew up in Leamington and while it’s not a town famed for comedy, he and his mate found a way. He recalls: “I started doing street shows aged 16 outside the Shakespeare centre in Stratford. Me and my best friend Noel got the X16 home to Leamington and counted we’d made £30 in change and realised we never needed to get real jobs!” Stuart was never the funny kid at school although he tried very hard to be that guy. He says: “Apologies to my former classmates; in my defence I had undiagnosed ADHD and I hated school with a passion.”

Of the Midlands comedy scene Stuart says: “Birmingham has a brilliant, friendly comedy scene and I’ve even been to a few gigs in Leamington and Warwick when I’ve been home visiting family. There’s everything to play for career-wise and the audiences are just the right balance of excitable and up for it, but they still want you to try your hardest. Loyal people with great hair, I’ve always said it.”

He’s achieved so much already but we wonder what Stuart’s dream gig would look like. He says: “I’m happy with anything where I save the world and get carried shoulder high out of the venue, so I guess – human sacrifice at a volcano?” More realistically, it’s “having the first Climate Comedy Special on Netflix, so there’s a mountain to climb!”