Comedian Of The Month

Each Comedian of the Month on MoodyComedy is a comic who has never previously featured on the website. Reasons for selection can include various current projects the comedian is involved with, or perhaps recent appearances on television programmes or podcasts. There is no strict criteria however, as Comedian of the Month simply stands as a collection of recommendations, highlighting interesting and original aspects of certain comedians and their work.

This is a brand new feature on MoodyComedy and I am creating it with the intention of passing on new names to as many people as possible. Each month I will choose my favourite comic discovery of the past four weeks and write a short piece on why I liked them, where they can be found and why you might be interested in their work. So here it goes…

I first became aware of the Norwegian comic, Daniel Simonsen in the middle of January when the first episode of Vic & Bob’s new show: House of Fools but the series ran throughout February and this is where I feel Simonsen really came into his own. I said in a post a couple of weeks back that House of Fools is an absolutely incredible programme and though I may be biased because I have adored everything Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer have produced in the past, I still stand by my judgement.

Daniel is an absolute gem here because he brings a youth-like feel to a show otherwise dominated with more ‘mature’ actors and comedians. I think Bob Mortimer has a very good eye when it comes to finding new comic talents (such as Angelos Epithemiou, or Dan Skinner, who featured on Shooting Stars and as Bosh in House of Fools) and though I can’t be certain if he is also the one who spotted Simonsen, it was definitely a wise decision. He plays Bob’s son, Erik, who is witty, hateful and possibly very evil. He provides many of the biggest laugh throughout the series, especially in my house.

After watching and loving the whole series of House of Fools multiple times, I looked up Daniel Simonsen as I just knew that if he did stand up, I would find it brilliant. He does and I do. I watched this clip from Russell Howard’s Good News Extra in 2012 and fell in love with Daniel a little bit more. He is interesting; foreign: an outsider. I find that so refreshing as I always feel that an accent that isn’t typically British adds something special to a performance and I like the idea of people from other countries looking in on our comedy scene and joining it, yet also passing comment that wouldn’t usually be made (such as Henning Wehn’s material).

Simonsen’s style is brilliant as he seems so young yet has such in-depth and critical opinions on things like your basic observational comedians. One of my favourite lines from him is his thoughts on when a person asks him why he isn’t talking at a social event and he replies with: ‘oh, I forgot’ and his simple statement of ‘it’s really difficult to be a human being’.

For more information, follow Daniel Simonsen on Twitter.