Since graduating from the University of Manchester in 2012, comedian Rhys James has become a well-established figure on the British comedy scene, known for his appearances on the satirical panel show ‘Mock the Week’ (may the show rest in peace) and his brilliant stand-up shows, such as ‘Snitch’ (2019-2021) and ‘Spilt Milk’ (2023).
Having “always wanted to write a book”, Rhys James has recently released his self-proclaimed ‘dread memoir’, You’ll Like It When You Get There: A Life Lived Reluctantly. The book explores the comic’s life through the lens of dread and anxiety, weaving together incredibly well-crafted and laugh-out-loud stories that are surprisingly honest and open.
Ahead of his book tour show in Manchester on September 17, I sat down to talk to Rhys about his writing, career, and time as a student-comedian in Manchester.
Whilst it seems to be the trend as of late for comedians to foray into the world of memoir-writing, for Rhys James it has been a long-time coming, with the comic claiming to have wanted to write a book “probably for longer than [he] wanted to be a comedian”. As his friends were stealing their parents’ cards to buy furniture on Habbo Hotel, James admits that he used to use his mum’s credit card to enter into online short story contests: “I would always lose, so for years I assumed they were a scam, but I was just shit at writing”. His new book confirms this is certainly not the case anymore.
James explains that the idea for the book came through a conversation with an industry colleague. “The question was like, ‘what’s the angle through which you sort of see the world?’ And gradually, through just having this coffee with [the colleague], she was just like ‘everything you’re saying is about dread and everything you’re saying is about avoidance, so it feels like that kind of is who you are’”.
James went on to hone the initial idea that became the defining theme of the book by exploring different aspects of his life and seeing if dread was ‘the connecting thing’. “As you do that, you can’t help but try and intellectualise and analyse how you got there. And so, you go through every seemingly significant moment in your life or adolescence to be like, oh, ‘is that the reason that I’m scared of that?’…so there’s loads of that in the book where I point to it and then I zoom out again and go, ‘nah, probably not’. It’s just easy and convenient to come up with a reason, and often there isn’t a reason; it’s just a sort of chemical thing happening in your own brain”.
Focusing on dread and anxiety throughout the book in such an introspective way, it’s no surprise that the comic learnt and ‘overcame’ a lot about himself whilst writing. “Writing it all down and having to look at it in a comedic way kind of othered it as a feeling; it othered my anxiety slightly and it took its power away a little bit. I mean, it’s going to come back because I know myself. Give it a year. But then I’ll just have to write another [book]. Every time I feel a bit sad, I’ll just write a book”.
It’s refreshing to see a more self-reflective side to Rhys James, whose stand-up comedy persona is “a bit high status”, as he puts it. “It’s interesting to be more direct, and I really loved it. I have loved having this separate thing where I can just say the truth and be really vulnerable”.
However, the enjoyment of writing, navigating new material and a new medium has come with a different learning curve. “The day [the book] came out, I was just freaking out. In all of the build up, I was like ‘this is great’, and then when it came out, I was doing lots of interviews and stuff and it was just like ‘oh god, it’s out there and anyone can just pick it up and it will exist forever and anyone can look at it’. Stand-up exists in such a moment that it’s like you kind of don’t necessarily remember what you’re saying so you can get away with saying something mental. But, when you write it in a book you can just go back and go ‘hang on’. So, you know, hopefully it won’t sell very well and it can all get pulped and no one will know I ever did it”.
Demonstrably, Rhys James’ respones to writing the book that he has always wanted to write is laced with the same dread and anxiety that fills the book’s pages.
Since the book came out, James has been travelling around the UK for conversational shows where he has been speaking to other comedians about the ‘dread memoir’. “They’re very casual; we’re not delving too deep. It’s all on the surface and we’re being funny about all the subjects, but it’s interesting to see what different comedians are going to pick out as the funny things they want to talk about”.
James will be in conversation with Ivo Graham when he comes to Manchester for the book tour – incredibly exciting news for any British comedy fans. Having been asked in interviews about the best ways to overcome dread, James has previously cited having a friend like Graham as a great strategy, describing his fellow comic as “a purveyor of fun”. “[Graham] injects so much more fun into [hosting] than just the professional obligation of being the host…he’s so last minute, so he definitely won’t have read it…he’ll see it as some sort of last minute challenge and he’ll make it like Taskmaster”. If that doesn’t sell the show to comedy fans, I don’t know what will.
Credit: Headline Publishing Group
After studying at the University of Manchester for his undergrad in Politics and International Relations, James still loves coming up and “doing stuff”, claiming it’s one of the few places where he stays as long as possible to enjoy a bit of the city. “There’s lots of old sort of areas I want to go to. Although, to be honest, you can’t really go to Fallowfield as a 34 year old man without looking like a creep. You can’t be popping into that Sainsbury’s, or, my god, go down to that McDonalds. Or Friendship – is that still there? Yeah, you can’t be doing that”.
It’s funny to hear Rhys James, a genuinely successful adult, talk about living in Manchester as a student. “I lived in Withington – awful place – directly opposite a school and it was so noisy all the time. And then I lived in Deansgate in my third year. It’s so rogue, I know. Basically most of my mates left and went into placement. So, there were only two of us left and we lived in like an insanely nice flat in the Hacienda building. It was really bougie for a student, I mean it wasn’t student living. But, they opened up some cool things, like Gorilla, which opened the year I moved there, and that was exciting because there was nothing like that in Manchester at that time”.
Most importantly, for Rhys James, his flat in Deansgate was opposite the old Comedy Store – an important spot for the then student-comedian, who was driven to move to Manchester mostly by his pursuit of comedy. James admits that his time as a student was very much overshadowed by his passion for comedy: “My social life was just like ‘I’m going off to Oldham to do 10 minutes [of stand-up] for 50 quid’, which was obviously great – I always had cash. But, instead of like going to the club for someone’s birthday, I’d go and do [a gig] because I wanted to be a professional comedian…I was so useless at being a student”.
However, Manchester proved to be the perfect place to start gigging, because “if you start in London, you have to do loads of open mic gigs and you’re really just performing to other open mic comedians. There’s no genuine audience and [the gigs] are really hard work. In Manchester, it’s a bit of a baptism of fire, because it’s quite quick that you can do an unpaid try-out spot on a professional night. So, everyone else on the bill is like a comedian who’s been going for years and really knows what they’re doing. You kind of just have no choice but to up your game a bit because there’s maybe 200 audience members there and you don’t want to be embarrassed. It’s good, like, you don’t pick up bad habits because you see how people actually do it and it’s great to instantly get in on that”.
With so much conviction and determination to become a stand-up comedian, James says that “there was no great moment where I was like ‘great, now I can do this’. Instead, there was never a moment where I thought I wouldn’t be a comedian. I started so young and I guess I had the arrogance of youth and privilege, I was just like I want to be [a stand-up comedian], so I’ll just do it. In my head, I genuinely just thought ‘I just won’t stop until I’m successful at this’”.
Since starting his career 17 years ago, Rhys James has seen enormous success, even as the comedy scene has changed and evolved over time. Despite social media now playing a massive part in comedy, James says that it hasn’t changed the way he approaches his work. “It’s already really hard to write stand-up comedy, so it’s sort of best if you don’t limit yourself further…if you’re going to limit yourself of like ‘well, I can’t do that idea because it’s not hooky enough’, then you’re basically not a comedian anymore: you’re just working in advertising”.
For James, the internet and rise of social media has had both positive and negative impacts on the industry: “The internet’s changed [comedy] in that it’s more democratic in theory because you’re not just trying to impress a commissioner or a booker of a certain panel show so much. You’ve got access to your whole audience. And, in theory, an algorithm should push you out to the right people who’ll like your stuff. Obviously, we are all endlessly frustrated by the lack of that happening until it does. And we’re also seeking this other weird sort of faceless kingmaker, which is a bit gross. Technically, it is a bit better than before, because [before] it was just like, whoever’s in charge at the time needs to like you and needs to come and see you and needs to decide that you fit a certain gap they’ve got at the time, and you can get lucky”.
The comedian describes himself to have gotten “very lucky”, particularly with regard to his appearances on ‘Mock the Week’. “I really suited that and they saw me at the right time, and I got on [the show] when I was quite new. I could easily have not gotten lucky. They could’ve not come to watch me, and I would’ve been buzzing now that the internet just lets you put stuff out there and grow an audience organically”.
Advising any young comedians looking to kickstart their career now that social media exists, James states that “the sooner you can start and do a gig, the better”. “Don’t worry about trying to find that perfect gig to do for the first one. You’re actually better off just growing quietly and starting kind of secretly…I know I’ve been banging on about social media being really important, but don’t put anything on social media for a few years. Don’t put your early gigs on social media…it’ll be much more impactful if you do that once you’re actually really good and you’ve honed your craft a little bit…it takes a lot of willpower, but don’t just burn [good material] on the internet”.
Quick-fire Questions
In your book, there is a chapter about living with a particularly troubling towel-less housemate. Do you have any advice for dealing with difficult housemates?
“I mean, fuck, I don’t know…I suffered in silence…so I would say you need to deal with it head on: set boundaries early. I think young people are much better at that than my generation. I think Gen Z are fantastic at setting boundaries. So say that it’s just, you know, affecting your mental health, like what are they supposed to say back to that?”
If you could give yourself a new nickname today, what would you choose?
“I wish I could just be Penguin, like I wish it would catch on. But, in my real life, people call me Reej, and that started because another comedian in Edinburgh jokingly asked me ‘what would your nickname be?’. And I said Reej or ‘The Boy’. That was like 10 years ago…he kept just saying ‘it’s your boy RJ’ every time I entered a bar or something like that. He was taking the piss out of me but he did it so much that by the end of the month, everyone was just calling me Reej, and they still call me Reej. I kind of like that I sort of started that one myself. But, I’m too old to be ‘The Boy’ now, so let’s just go with ‘RJ The Man’”.
Rhys James will be in conversation with Ivo Graham on 17 September at Fairfield Social Club as part of his book tour for ‘You’ll Like It When You Get There’. Tickets are available here.