David Stuart: From 'corporate drone' to comedy success
After being fired from a corporate job, David Stuart relocated to New Zealand from Scotland and now has a burgeoning comedy career.
For David Stuart, a self-described “rehabilitated corporate drone,” comedy was a last resort.
Working in the charity sector in the UK, the now New Zealand-based comic found himself unemployed, but with a long-distance partner over here, he decided to pack his bags.
“I got fired quite suddenly and had a rough time after that. And I think it was a couple of days afterwards, my now partner was like, why don't you just come here?
David Stuart
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“And I thought, well, that's about as far away as you can go, so let's do it.”
The Billy T-award-nominated comic had already been dabbling in comedy in his native Edinburgh, where he tried out at a comedy club and enrolled on a stand-up course.
“I remember thinking, just do it. You're either gonna be able to pay your rent or you're not gonna be able to pay your rent, but at least this way, you'll have done something completely new and completely out there.
“So I went along to this course, and it turned out, not only was I funny in a corporate setting, but I could be funny on stage too,” he tells RNZ podcast Here Now.
Not only was he unemployed, further misfortune followed that he has since mined as part of his act.
“I think a week after losing my job, I was already sad, already nearly there, and then I realised I had crabs.”
Given his fragile state, the relatively minor condition was devastating, he says.
“It just took that one crab infestation to break me and so that's what my first set was about.”
With a few local shows under his belt in Scotland, Stuart set off across the seas to be reunited with his distant lover and to face his next challenge, settling into New Zealand in the middle of lockdown.
New Zealand audiences have responded well to his “camp gay, bitchy, Scottish” persona, he says, not that there haven’t been tough gigs.
“Sarah Millican has a rule where she says when she kills or when she bombs, she's only allowed to think about it until 12 o'clock the next day, and then she has to move on.
“Nobody can champion you like you can do. And so that's the way I see it…I think I've survived by being sure that I'll survive.”
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