Kate Barron, What’s Your Problem?!

What’s Your Problem? is a podcast recorded at the Big Belly Comedy Club, where we try to figure out what’s wrong with comedians that makes them want to tell jokes on stage. 

Kate Barron (https://katebarron.ca/) is a Canadian standup comedian and writer, based in London. 

Kate Barron, what’s your problem? 

God, well, how much time do you have? I have a lot of problems. Anger issues. The classic things like slow walkers and stuff. If I see people doing things wrong, it gets to me in a way that I cannot help myself but to intervene.

Like when you say “people doing things wrong” do you mean like shoplifting?

No, no, no, that’s fine. I mean the kind of people who can’t charge their phone properly. I saw a woman at an airport once, and she clearly didn’t know what a USB plug was and how you plug it into a USB outlet. So she sat there and she kept plugging it in the wrong way, and it kept not working. 

All she had to do was flip it, but she couldn’t figure it out. Then she was trying to shove it in the outlet. I did not say anything to her. I walked over, I grabbed it, and I just shoved it. My sister said “You look fucking psychotic. You didn’t even say anything to her and then you just walked away.” But so what? I helped her. When I see people being incompetent, I cannot handle it.

What are you gonna be like, when you’re old and you are the incompetent one?

I’ll kill myself. You know, when you’re running for the train and you can tell the doors are about to close. Someone’s in front of you running for it too, and then they get on and they stand right inside the doors? I will push them in. This is my problem. I don’t think I will be a good famous person, if I ever get to be famous. Because I’m such a fucking cunt when I’m out in the world. I will push people out of the way at the bottom of the escalator.

So your problem is rage?

I described it once on stage as, I have road rage but I don’t drive. It’s just all the time, and not in cars

So how did this anger lead you to thinking you should do standup?

I always wanted to be a comic, forever. I like ranting about the weird small stuff in the world. I grew up poor, we didn’t have a lot of shit, so maybe that’s why some of that came out. 

I grew up as a fat loser kid, was bullied a lot and picked on. Maybe I have all this anger built up inside of me that I’m just ready to unleash. I just like ranting about stuff and I can easily do it. But as soon as the rant or that burst of anger is done, I’m completely fine and chill. 

The whole point of this podcast is to try and get under the skin of comedians and to figure out why they do what they do, and I feel like being bullied at school is going to come up a lot…

Of course yeah, we’re all fucked up, most comedians. What I heard the other day was that all ambition is related to trauma. That is an interesting thing, right? Because any comedian is thinking “I want to do well, I want people to laugh. I want all that. It’s all seeking validation from external people because you never got it as a kid.” 

So tell us about the first gig, the first time you shared your rage.

I wasn’t actually raging my first set ever. 

I wanted to do comedy forever. My parents said they remembered when I was 10 or 11 saying I want to be a stand up comedian, but I thought it was only for famous people.

I grew up on sitcoms. I remember seeing people like Roseanne Barr, and in my mind you could only be a standup if you were already famous like her, for being on TV or something like that. 

I saw Eddie Murphy specials when I was way too young to watch them, like Delirious and Raw. Those were the greatest things I’d ever seen. So I thought you become famous and you become like an actor, then you become a comedian. I didn’t know there was a path.

So I always wanted to do it, and then I just didn’t have the guts to do it. I was overweight. I had no self esteem. And then it wasn’t until much, much later, I was in my thirties, and I just wondered why the fuck am I not doing this?

I had been writing jokes for a long time and I wrote about my life, just stuff that was in my life. I did a five minute spot on this open mic that followed a pro show, where the pro acts voted for the best open mic act, and the winner would get five minutes in the next pro show. I won that on my first time.

You mentioned being influenced by sitcoms when you were young, and that made you want to do standup?

I think there are so few occasions where you can get an entire group of people sitting there and genuinely listening to the words of one person and just their ideas. I think, an incredibly powerful art form. 

When you go to the theatre or something, it’s amazing and it’s moving. But the theatre, there’s the orchestra, the actors, the sets, there’s everything. But comedy is just a person and their ideas and their voice. Sometimes there’s not even a fucking mic or a stage. Like we’ve all been at bad gigs like that. So it really is just a person in the ideas. 

I think there’s something so incredibly powerful and moving that people are sitting there wanting to listen to somebody’s ideas. 

I often have this sort of clash of consciousness, like, trying to go is, do I need to be saying something more? Is it enough to just make people laugh? Do I need to be saying something and making people think a little bit more rather than just doing dick jokes and stupid shit like that? 

Do you, though? 

I know! But then I also just want people to have a good time. Life is hard and life sucks, some people just want to listen, they just want to chill out, they want to have a good fucking night, and take their mind off everything.

When you first started comedy, did you just want to make people laugh, or did you want to make them think as well?

Yeah, before I just wanted to make people laugh. But now. I love it when people can take a really big idea and break it down very simply, and can make people relate to it from all different walks of life. I think if you’re able to do that and make it funny to me that’s magic. So I’m trying to work on bigger ideas now for my comedy.

Was there a point as a child, where you realised you were “the funny one?”

Yeah, I got bullied and stuff, so I thought; make them laugh with you, not at you. Then I would be the class clown and make people laugh, and I was thought, oh I like this. Then I got voted class clown in the yearbook, and I was like, yeah I like this feeling. I liked being able to make people laugh, because then you kind of have a role. 

When you’re in school, you’re the jock, the nerd, the smart one, the whatever, right? So having my role as the class clown just really felt comfortable. It got me in trouble with teachers and parents and all that, because I was just saying things that were not appropriate. One of my friends’ dads said to me “You were so annoying as a kid. Because you were always so fucking offside. But you’re really funny as an adult.”

After that first open mic, tell us a little bit about what happened and how you ended up here.

So I just started begging for five minute spots. In Canada, there’s not a huge amount of spots. So you’re just begging people for five minute spots, always unpaid and I was doing them like once every three weeks or something. I thought “oh, I’ll be famous in no time at all” – I had no idea you needed to really work at it and write, and do  gigs and gigs and gigs all the time to really do it. 

So I just started, gigging sort of slowly, more and more and thinking, okay, really, I want to take this seriously. I always had a day job and I think that helped keep me focused because I didn’t get to stay out and drink and party and get into all the drama of the comedy scene. I was never involved because I just had to do my gigs and then go home because it’d be up in the morning for work. 

I just kept doing them and doing them, and every show I was on I stayed to the end of the show. It’s really interesting so few comics that I came up with were doing that – they’d  do their five minute spot and leave. Why would you leave when this is the best opportunity to see other acts do the exact same room with the exact same audience, and you can see how they handle it. 

I tried to get on every show that I could that everyone was better than me on – I want to be the worst one on every bill I was on. I started becoming such a comedy nerd.

I was working as an art dealer and I quit my job and I went to work for Second City, a big improv school and company based in Toronto. So I started working for them because I wanted to learn the business side of comedy, and then I could take free classes for Second City, writing, improv, voiceover acting, all those classes for free. 

I was really trying to come at it from a strategic point of view. I think just because I got started later, I was in my 30s and everyone who I’m coming up with was in their 20s or early 20s. So I have to get better faster, because time is not on my side. So I just committed myself to doing that and I started getting better and doing as much as I could, gigging all the time.

I’d do gigs in the US, although I can’t do paid work in the US there, so I’d do free gigs just to do it, just to  perform, be down there and see what it’s like.

Then I came over here (UK) for a wedding in Inverness, and I was in London for a little bit before that and I thought,why don’t I just try to do some shows over here? At that point I had been gigging for three years, I got signed to an agency who owns a chain of clubs across Canada. But I was thinking, where’s the progression here? I saw that everyone who was doing really well either went to the US or over here, so I came over here just to try doing some shows. 

I already decided, I was going to go to the US. But it’s crazy expensive, very hard to get into. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to make it happen. I wouldn’t have been able to get a day job down there. So I didn’t know how I was going to support myself. 

Then I came over here to the Comedy Store King Gong and won it, I did Angel, the Stand, a few other places, and I love these fucking audiences.

Someone told me you’re Canadian, so that’s Commonwealth, and your grandparents were from Manchester, so you could just get a visa. I didn’t realise it was that easy. Then I was just like, fuck it, I’m coming over here.

Tell us about your podcast.

I have two podcasts. The first one is called “You’ve Changed” and I talked to people in the entertainment industry in front and behind the camera, comics, influencers, models, everyone, about moments in their life that have changed their path. 

I have a second one with Andrew Madsen called “Text Me in the Morning.” That’s all about sex and dating and relationships and we fight about things like first dates, situationships, who should pay, is porn good or bad, etcetera.