‘Everyone’s thing is the worst thing in the world,’ he tells me. ‘We all do it. We
go to a show and say “I wish he hadn’t joked about that. That’s the thing I care
about”.’ He recalls playing in New York for the first time and receiving a letter
from a Jewish society upset about his Anne Frank material. ‘I said to them, “You
laughed at the jokes about famine, Aids and cancer. You knew I was joking
there, didn’t you?” I’m playing the idiot. That’s what irony is. It’s the opposite
of what you actually think. You wouldn’t satirise an idea that you fundamentally
agreed with and get excited about it as an artist.’
