INTERVIEW
Private, aye? Larry delivers more than killer lines BY SUSIE DANIELS having (or not) a wa*k in Dubai. “They’re against gay people there so it’s also about how to try and accept other people’s opinions. It’s basically an hour of me being funny and silly. I took it to the Fringe last year and it’s on tour until June. I’ve already started on my new material for this year’s Fringe and I’ll probably do wee bits here and there in the Fandan show.” Larry has learned a lot of lessons along the comedy road including some personal beauty tips. He explains: “I had a haircut that made me look like one of the guys from Dumb and Dumber. I learned don’t get a £100 haircut the day before your photo-shoot because I looked like an absolute eejit!” The southsider, who was nominated for best newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015 and won the Amused Moose award at the Fringe in 2016, radiates ‘ease’ on stage. Obviously years of honing his skills and testing the water in dank venues has worked a treat. A Scottish audience, even after downing a few drinks, is notoriously hard to please and quick to poke fun at a drowning guy on stage if he shows any fear or weakness. But that ‘I’m still in the pub’ rapport with the audience works a treat and Larry reveals there’s no pre-performance mantra to relax before going on stage. Larry says: “I’ve been jammy the past three years with great reviews for my shows in Edinburgh. “Am I nervous? I’m screaming inside.
It’s weird, I’m not exactly really laid back before I get on, I’m terrified. “But if something makes me laugh just before I go on it’s okay. I guess if you’re laid back you don’t describe yourself as it.” His comedy heroes include Jim Carrey, Richard Pryor, Omid Djalili and Billy Connolly. “The usual silly jokes made me laugh. When I left school Kevin Bridges was doing the Michael McIntyre Comedy Roadshow on television,” he says. “There was nothing else like it I’d seen as a comedy show on stage. Comedy was really big during that time and I loved making people laugh. t school I used to practice in front of the mirror making funny faces and going over a joke I wanted to tell everyone. “I did a comedy show at school run by the PE teacher who doubled as the show organiser. “I was told by the PE teacher I was funny and it was a bit of a weird thing but I treated school days like a gig and would think to myself ‘I can make that joke funnier and that one was weaker’, or ‘I didn’t get many laughs from that one’.” After school and before stand-up took off, Larry worked as a cleaner and a pizza delivery boy. “I was cleaning toilets and offices and delivering pizzas,” he laughs. “The toilet cleaning wasn’t the hard job, everyone knows the difference between white and yellow but the pizza company’s slogan was ‘we’ll deliver anywhere in Glasgow’ so they’d tell me an address and I had ten minutes to get from some-
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