This guy is great!
You could describe Darren Harriott as relentlessly upbeat. And he has good reason to be upbeat. In the past year his stand-up
comedy career has taken off. He was nominated for the Best Newcomer Award at the
Edinburgh Fringe Festival last summer and since then has made a major impact on Live at the Apollo and, this month, Mock The Week.
“It’s insane,” he chuckles, as we settle down to chat in a Soho club. Maybe the reason the fast-talking 29-year-old is so happy is because he knows how differently things could have turned out.
www.beyondthejoke.co.uk/...
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Monday Youffraita
On having a London house share:
Darren Harriott spent his youth looking for role models (he thinks he might possibly be distantly related to Ainsley Harriott but doesn't know for sure). “We were obsessed with So Solid Crew. 50 Cent said he’d been shot nine times and we thought that was great. We just wanted people to think we were tough.” He was 13 when he started carrying an orange flick knife, but was already trying to resist peer pressure. “The others used to take them to school. I never did.”
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Harriott considers himself to be one of the fortunate ones. “I’ve only recently realised when I was thinking about the show that none of us had dads. It was never spoken about. It was just a common thing.” His father Patrick did not live at home but, until his suicide, at least he was able to stay in contact with him by phone when he wasn’t in prison. “Looking back I think all we really wanted was for our dads to give us a hug and say they loved us.”
www.beyondthejoke.co.uk/...
On Jamie Oliver; and starting a gang:
Gay Pride in London; and a Straight Pride Parade in Boston:
A bit of background for this next clip:
The Black Country gained its name in the mid nineteenth century due to the smoke from the many thousands of ironworking foundries and forges plus also the working of the shallow and 30ft thick coal seams.
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Today the Black Country is described as most of the four Metropolitan District Council areas of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton and the term is used as a marketing tool to sell and promote the West Midlands region to the north of Birmingham.
www.bbc.co.uk/...
Also, Brummies are people from Birmingham.
Everything changed on New Year’s Eve when Harriott was 15. “I got into an argument with the gang over who made a song.” His friends set on him and he ended up in hospital.
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He was interested in drama and comedy and started to do stand-up.
www.beyondthejoke.co.uk/...
On lockdown: