Since he was a teenager Daniel Sloss has enjoyed the life of a comedian – months away from home, boozy late nights, missed mornings, lazy afternoons.
But the 32-year-old Edinburgh-based funnyman became a dad for the first time last year and his priorities have changed.
For a start rather than staying up until 4am drinking with his mates when he was doing his 16-date off Broadway show this month - he went back to the hotel to see his young family.
Ahead of tomorrow’s Glasgow Armadillo show which kicks off his latest UK and European tour, Fifer Daniel admitted: “We took the boy to New York because we wanted to test the theory of how much travelling you can do with a baby.
“He’s already good in the car but this was his first overseas trip. He was cool about it but sitting backstage for four or five hours isn’t fun for him or his mum either so I’ll still do gigs on my own and then come back home.
“It was a different type of New York trip but still fun.
“I’d have drinks on stage, of course, but my priorities changed.
“Instead of wanting to drink until 2 or 4 in the morning, I’d much prefer to have a couple during the show and go back to stare at a sleeping baby in the hotel room.
“I was a bit more of a tourist this time. When you don’t have a kid you can just watch Netflix all day.”
For the past 13 years Daniel has just thought about making people laugh - and not just in the UK but across the globe.
He is big in America, in Australia and plays big venues across Europe. He’s also gigged in Transylvania, Russia and Japan.
His stand-up shows Dark and Jigsaw stream on Netflix in 190 countries and 26 languages and X was shown in Vue cinemas as well as on HBO.
He is a twisted clown who makes you think and his topics have included the death of his sister, rape, disability, grooming and in Jigsaw he created a routine which has, to date, caused over 300,000 break-ups and the end of over 600 marriages (Sloss stopped counting in 2021).
But his success meant before Covid shut the world he’d spent the last 18 months doing 300 performances of X in 40 countries.
Still hoarse from jet lag after returning from New York – his seventh sold-out off-Broadway – Daniel said: “My priorities have shifted.
“Stand-up comedy was always the most important thing in the world to me and now it’s not.
“It doesn’t mean it’s dropped down a thousand places but I do wonder is that just the kid or is that me being in my 30s.
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
“I’m slowing my tours down so I can be at home more which means I’ll enjoying touring more because I won’t be away all the time and I won’t get bored of the shows quickly.”
Daniel is taking to fatherhood with gusto. He happily revealed he’s the chief nappy changer and calls himself a stay-at-home dad because his work is in the evenings so he has all day to be with his son, whose name they are keeping to themselves for now.
Before he became a dad Daniel told the Record he’d never be a comedian who did jokes about fatherhood - because they’d all been done.
But now he is worried that he’ll become soft now since he’s become more interested in nappies.
He laughed: “I’m worried it’ll make me s*** in general.
“I have an impossible standard in my head about what being a comedian should be about and one of the rules that only existed in my head is you don’t talk about fatherhood or being a dad. But I’ve now got nothing else to talk about.”
Give some of the vitriol he’s thrown at abusive men and toxic masculinity and in new show Can’t the myth of cancel culture, Daniel might feel angry at the way the world is because he is a dad and wants the best for his boy.
Daniel said: “It would be nice if he made me more angry because that would be good for my comedy but there’s always that fear - once you become happy will you still stay funny?
“Funny doesn’t usually come from happiness it comes from anger and sadness because it’s necessary in those places.”
While he will be going away in chunks for his tour of Can’t then coming home for five days or a week before going out again next year, he’ll definitely be taking the family to Australia when he tours next year.
But even that is causing some grief.
He marries Kara in mid-May in Scotland but won’t be home from Australia until two weeks before the wedding.
Daniel laughed: “She’s not thrilled and has asked why I’ve chosen to tour so close to the wedding.
“But truthfully the Australian comedy festivals run from February to May and I’ve got lots of friends who do it.
“The wedding can’t be during the festival as half my friends won’t be able to come to Scotland.”
Of course as he’s Daniel Sloss he’s had to have two stags. He’s already had a well-behaved one near Loch Tay a couple of months ago where his Scottish friends and “sensible people” including his brothers played golf.
But in February he’s off to Vegas “with some reprobates”.
Laughing a bit manically he purred: “Everyone I’ve spoken to is anxious about the Vegas one.”
Daniel, who became a stand-up at 17 and two years later became the youngest comedian to perform a solo season in London’s West End, is in a good place.
But like many performers he found lockdown a dark and scary place.
Although lockdown may have been his fault.
He laughed: “Lockdown was what I was wishing for on the Hubris X tour in 2018-2019. I wanted six months to a year to just be at home.
“I got what I wanted and hated it. Doing nothing made me feel worthless and worried I might not have a career at the end of it.”
Of course he did. He was the biggest name to play the reduced 2021 Edinburgh Fringe, and for nine months that same year his Hubris tour made him the biggest ticket selling comedian in the world (Pollstar), he wrote his first book Everyone You Hate Is Going to Die and now he is back with a vengeance with his 12th solo show Can’t - which takes aim at comedians who moan about cancel culture.
Daniel said: “I got so bored of this myth you can’t say anything anymore as someone who has said everything, multiple times in different ways.
“There’s nothing off limits in comedy if you’re good at what you do. You can joke about anything you like.
“You’re allowed to make a joke for the sake of making a joke but if you’re joke is s*** and lazy and it feels like you’ve just written a joke about this topic because it’ll get you more viewers or seem you’re edgy.
“You are allowed to make the joke but people are allowed to think you’re pathetic and s*** at your job.”
Fatherhood certainly doesn’t seem to have made Daniel soft just yet.
* Daniel Sloss: Can’t is on at Glasgow Armadillo tomorrow. He’s at Ayr Gaiety on Oct 6, Aberdeen Comedy Festival on October 14, Edinburgh Usher Hall on Dec 8 and Dundee Caird Hall on December 17. www.danielsloss.com
